The joy we once lost
by RicartElit
Summary: The first few years everything was alright. Nagisa was leading a happy life, he was a teacher, had friends, his family was coming back together. What could possibly go wrong? Then came the nightmares, the treacherous thoughts. He starts spiraling into depression and no matter how much Akari tries, not even with Ritsu's infinite well of knowledge, can she pull him back. Time-Travel
1. Prologue - What was lost

This is my first fanfic so I hope you like it. I have cross posted it on AO3.

This fanfic was inspired by another one called Back to Zero (the part about the cure at least)

Everything was right in his life, he had friends, both old and new ones, his family was becoming once more united, he had a job he loved, a job guiding the youth of tomorrow like his late teacher, maybe even the beginnings of a relationship. Nagisa was truly happy and many times he thought that nothing could go wrong. Oh, how mistaken he was...

It all started one seemingly normal night, when he got a phone call. He groggily sat up from the bed and walked to the phone wondering who it might be at such a late hour. He picked up the phone and answered, not knowing who it was because of the unknown number.

"Hello? It is kinda late so if the matter is not important can it be left for tomorrow?"

A voice came from the phone, one he hadn't heard in a while. "Oh, sorry Nagisa I am currently in a foreign lab, so I forgot it would be night in Japan, I just wanted to tell you of a discovery I made." Nagisa instantly recognized that voice, it was Okuda.

"Okuda! I haven't heard from you in a while, it's nice to talk to you again, how has life been treating you?" Nagisa quickly answered to dissipate any possible unease.

"I've been well. I've visited a lot of interesting places all over the world, it's amazing some of the things people can do with chemistry. Anyways, you were the one closest to sensei so I thought I should tell you this in person." Her voice sounded sad, and a bit nostalgic. "Recently I've discovered a certain substance that would have fully stabilized Korosensei and, despite it being too late to do anything for him, the rest of our class decided to hold a little ceremony for sensei, where we would offer him a little tube with the substance and maybe some things relative to our current life as a little token of appreciation for the things he helped accomplish. I wanted to invite you to come too."

It had been as while since He'd truly had more of a passing fond thought about Korosensei. Actually, it made him realize how much he had been avoiding the topic, always steering the any conversations away from it. He decided to face sensei at least once more so he too could show his thankfulness. "I'll go, Korosensei deserves a lot of respect for what he for us, I'll see you there Okuda."

"Ok, I'll tell the others you'll be coming, the ceremony will happen in the old classroom, in 2 days in the afternoon. See you there Nagisa, Goodbye!"

"Goodbye" And he hung up.

Nagisa lost himself in his thoughts. 'I need to find something that Korosensei would like... What can I bring that has anything to do with being a teacher that can be considered special? I'll think of something tomorrow, it is too late for anything like that.'

He went back to bed, laid down and slept. And for the first time in years, his sleep was not peaceful.

-Nightmare-

Nagisa looked around, confused about his current location. He appeared to be in his old classroom. An eerie red light was coming from the windows and the air was heavy.

Wanting to find out what was happening, Nagisa walked to the door and opened it. He was instantly blasted by a strong gust of wind and slammed on the wall opposite to the door. He then started hearing footsteps. He tried to move but found himself paralyzed, vulnerable and a shadow started forming on the doorway, a tentacled shadow. He was feeling more and more frightened every second that passed, wondering what the hell was going on in this place. Then a figure appeared at the door and Nagisa was petrified. There stood Korosensei, a hole stained with fresh crimson blood in his chest, a cruel smirk on his usually friendly face, his entire body was black and contorted and in his hand was an Anti-sensei knife, covered in blood. He started walking towards Nagisa.

 **"You killed me, you were the one who did this, you are the one who killed the teacher all your classmates loved."** Korosensei's voice was distorted, almost demonic.

"Y-you were the one who asked me to! You were the one who TOLD me to do it!" Nagisa answered, frightened.

Korosensei didn't appear to even register what he said, simply chuckling, while slowly approaching Nagisa. **"Nurufufufufu, you could have saved me Nagisa-kun, there was a cure, but you still killed me"**

Nagisa started feeling guilt, crushing guilt, combined with dread because of what Korosensei might do to him. "We didn't know it was possible to cure you and you were already dying! How could we have saved you!?"

 **"You killed me Nagisa, and for that I will take your life, Nurufufufufufufufufufu!"** Korosensei's voice turned even more demonic, if at all possible and his laugh became malicious. He then plunged the knife into Nagisa's chest and though it was an Anti-sensei knife it still cut through him and hit heart, still laughing while doing it.

Nagisa felt an overwhelming amount of pain, and he screamed for what seemed like hours before he was rudely awoken.

-Real World-

"-gisa? Nagisa! Are you ok?!" He heard a feminine voice say.

"W-what? Where am I? What happened?" He asked still dazed by the pain he felt in the dream.

"You were screaming and struggling in your sleep so I tried to wake you up, but you were moving around too much." Nagisa finally connected the voice to Akari. He had forgotten that she was coming today to hang out with him. After that year they found themselves separated for a while but a year ago he moved into the same town as him and they rekindled their friendship and what was becoming recently a relationship.

"Oh, I just had a nightmare, nothing much. Just a normal nightmare." He tried to clear her worry, but she noticed the tired tone of his voice.

"Nagisa, you very rarely ever have nightmares, and even then most nightmares don't have people thrashing around, screaming and sweating! Don't try to dismiss this as nothing." She sternly told him. "What was it about and what made you have such a nightmare?"

"I really don't want to talk about it Akari, please." He asked in a pleading tone.

Noticing how uneasy he was, she decided to concede. "You are making me worry Nagisa, but for now I will leave it at that. But remember, if it persists I will not leave you alone."

"Thanks. Hey, did Okuda tell you of the ceremony?"

"Ceremony? Ah, the one to honor Korosensei's memory. Yeah she did, I'm going to bring one of the props from my newest drama."

"The one about the two enemy assassins who fall in love right? That's a great idea. I still have no clue what to bring..."

"I'm sure you'll think of something to bring. Now let's go to that new park, it's a bright day and the fresh air will do you some good."

-2 days later - Class E's classroom-

Everyone was at the ceremony. Karma and Okuda were already there when Nagisa arrived with Akari, as were Karasuma-sensei and Irina-sensei while Ritsu was in a computer screen. The rest of the class quickly arrived, Chiba and Hayami came after them, after that came Itona together with Terasaka and his gang, and the rest of the class soon after.

Karasuma-sensei opened the ceremony with a small speech about the, as he said 'Octopus', and then everybody gave their own two cents. One by one every student went to the front of the class and spoke to the others, leaving Nagisa for last.

Nagisa slowly walked to the front and faced his ex-classmates, his friends with who he spent an amazing year. "The year we spent with Korosensei was the best year in my life." He started. "He believed in us and helped us when no one else would, he made sure we had fun and catered to our needs, he was the best teacher we could have ever wished for. The only thing I would have desired of him that we didn't get was his survival. The only thing that could have made that year better was if Korosensei had stayed with us, so we could talk to him and seek his advice whenever we felt lost. That is my only regret, that I didn't manage to save Korosensei." The air was heavy and gloomy, everyone felt regret for their one failure.

"Ok, everyone, it's time for the offerings we brought for Korosensei." Irina-sensei said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

Everyone left the classroom, to a small shrine built on the forest that covered the mountain. One by one, they all approached the shrine and left an object which they felt best represented their appreciation for their late teacher. Sugino left a baseball he signed himself, Akari left a small prop knife and a bit of pudding, Karasuma-sensei left an Anti-sensei gun, Okajima left a bunch of adult magazines, and slowly everyone left a little offering. In the end came Nagisa and Okuda, she left the vial with the substance which could have saved Korosensei and Nagisa brought forth his offering, a little notebook with the names of every student he had taught up to the time he wrote it.

After the ceremony a few more words were spoken between the students before they all went their ways, the mood sullen.

Karma though, he found it to be the best opportunity to prank Nagisa. He approached him slowly while his back was turned to him and poked him in the back with something. "Ow, what was that for?" Nagisa asked while turning around to see what had happened.

"Just trying to do something nostalgic, too bad it doesn't work on people." Karma said with a mischevious tone.

As Nagisa turned around he spotted what he ha been poked with, an Anti-sensei knife. The knife brought him flashbacks of the nightmare 2 days before and he started panicking. _It's your fault, Nagisa,_ **_your fault!_** _You could have saved me but now you have my blood in your hands, it is_ _**YOUR FAULT!**_ Nagisa started hiperventilating much to Karma and Akari's concern and then passed out.

-The day after - Hospital-

Nagisa woke up somewhere unfamiliar, white walls, white sheets and constant beeping. Looking around he realized he was in an hospital, he tried to remember what happened and realized he had a panic attack. He would have a lot to explain to Akari.

Paying a bit more attention to his surroundings he noticed that someone was sleeping in a chair next to him, which he realized was Akari. He watched her sleep for what felt like an hour before she started stirring. The first thing he noticed were the bags under her eyes and her look of concern.

"Nagisa! Oh God, I was so worried, you just started to hiperventilate and then you collapsed, so I and Karma were trying to see what was wrong, but we couldn't find anything wrong so we called the hospital and they sent an ambulance and they told us you had a panic attack but-" Akari started before being interrupted by Nagisa.

"Calm down, you're speaking too fast. Just calm down, I'm ok." Nagisa tried to reassure her.

"Ok?! OK?! How can you tell me you are ok when you just passed out! What happened?"

"As the doctors have told you I had a panic attack, seeing that knife in Karma's hands just made me remember something unpleasant..." Said Nagisa, sounding a bit vague.

"It has to do with your nightmare doesn't it? The one you refused to talk about." Asked Akari concerned.

"Yeah, it does. It was a very bad nightmare."

"Do you want to talk about it? Y'know, to get it off your chest?"

"I-I, I had a nightmare in which I was trapped in our classroom and then Korosensei slowly approached me, looking terrifying. He blamed for his death,told me that it was I who killed me, who failed to save him. And I was just paralyzed as he stabbed me in the chest with one of his knives over and over again..."

"Nagisa, you know Korosensei would never blame you. There was no way to save him and he knew it, he was the one who asked you to do it. And just as he doesn't blame you, neither do any of us." Akari tried to make him feel less guilty. "Okuda even left me a vial of that substance she made so I could give you as a memento." She said,showing him a vial of yellow liquid.

"Thank you Akari, I know no one would blame me but subconsciously I still blame myself. But I'll be ok, just need a bit of rest." He told her reassuringly and then added in a whisper. "I hope."

"That's good, I've got to work so I'll be leaving now, see you later Nagisa." Akari told him, leaving the vial on the table next to the bed.

"Goodbye Akari, break a leg."

Akari left, leaving Nagisa alone with his thoughts which were becoming more and more grim.

-3 months later-

Akari din't know what to do anymore. Since that day in the hospital Nagisa had become less and less like the person she knew. A few days after the hospital he started looking sick and tired, with bag under his eyes and a sullen mood whenever he went. Then he stopped leaving his home unless it was for school or absolutely necessary, even his students noticed something was very wrong. He took a long sick a month and a half after leaving the hospital. The straw that broke the camel's back was when she found him draped over his couch with a few empty beer bottles on his table. She already knew something needed to be done but that scene made her decide to take an active role in helping him. She asked Ritsu for help, because of her easy access to information all over the world and they spent a month trying to getting him back to how he was. Gifts, counseling, emotional support, dragging him out into the sun, group meetings, even talking to his other friends, nothing seemed to work. Nagisa just fell deeper and deeper into his hole, closing himself off and trying to burn the bridges between himself and everyone.

It was on one of the days he left his house to drink himself under in a bar as he had run out of alcohol at home that everything changed. Akari had noticed he wasn't home and went searching for him in the usual bar. She had been talking to Ritsu, trying to find any way to bring him back after so many failures. She went into the bar and found him together with four glasses of something alcoholic.

"Nagisa! You have to stop this! You're going to end up killing yourself." She tried to reason with him.

"I-I-I k-killed him so it-t's only natural that I e-end up dying." He answered, clearly drunk.

"Don't ever say that Nagisa! Everyone would miss you if you died."

"Lies! T-there is nobody who would f-feel sad if I died, everyone b-blames me for his death."

"No one does! You're being unreasonable, Nagisa. Come on, we have to get you home." She insisted grabbing ahold of him and pulling him out of the bar after paying his tab.

They were crossing the road in front of the bar, Akari supporting him while Ritsu tried to comfort him when it happened.

Nagisa first saw white light, then he felt lot of pain, red mixed with green, broken electronics, then black and finally nothing. He believed he would never wake up again, his only regret was having taken Akari and Ritsu with him. He would have never guessed that his new mission was just about to start.


	2. Chapter 1 - A new hope and plans

Due to school occupying most of my time, I will only be able to write during the weekends.

I hope you like this chapter of "The joy we once lost".

 _-Nagisa-_

 _Thud_

 _Thud_

 _Thud_

Nagisa's first sign that something wasn't as it should be was his head-splitting headache. After all, dead people don't have headaches, do they? Then came light, a lot of it, like the times you are subjected to the sun after spending a day closed in a dark room. Maybe he really was dead and the light he was seeing was an angel, or a demon, after all he did cause his friends to die. The light started fading away and Nagisa saw... he saw, well he saw something that he most definitely did not expect. Looking around he realized he was in his room, his old room, in his old bed. He hadn't been here in years and there were things on the shelves that he thought he had lost long ago. He tried to stand up but something was wrong, it was like his entire body had changed, like he had lost all of his motor control. With a lot of effort he climbed out of his bed and started making his way to the bathroom. As he was walking through the room his gaze ended up on his calendar... THAT was most definitely not the date today should have been. The calendar said 30th of August, 20XX. T-that was years ago! 12 years ago to be precise, back then he was just an eight year old kid. Now even more confused he entered his bathroom and looked at the mirror. There was only one word to describe what he saw. Tiny, he was tiny, his usual height was nothing impressive but right now he really was small. Dazed because of his discoveries, Nagisa walked back to his bed and sat there thinking, wondering if this was some kind of messed up prank by the world to give him some hope and then rip it away from his hands, some dream that he never wanted to wake up from.

'Could this truly be real?' Nagisa wondered 'Is this a chance to fix everything? Maybe I can save Korosensei, Yukimura-sensei, and everyone will be ok!' Hope was blossoming in his chest, until his now usual depression hit. 'But can I really do it? I am barely 8 years old! How am I supposed to do this?! Why not Karasuma-sensei, he has power in the Ministry of Defense, or maybe Karma, he is smarter than me, he would know what to do.'

Upon realising what he was doing, Nagisa slapped himself. 'No! I am the one who came back, for whatever reason I was given this chance so I won't waste it! I will save them all. Now I just need to plan. I need to build a timeline of events that can or can not, should or should not be avoided. Some events need to happen or too much will change.'

Just as Nagisa was walking towards his desk to find some paper to write on something fell out of his pocket. Curious, he picked it up and discovered what it was. Maybe the gods really wanted him to succeed as the object he had just picked up was the vial Okuda gifted him. He had no idea how it got there as he usually left it at home, but he wouldn't complain about it. After storing the vial somewhere safe he went back to his desk. He grabbed a pen, some paper and started writing:

Timeline of events until the start of 'Assassination Classroom':

2 years before - Capture of the God of Death after his disciple's betrayal.

2 years to 1 month before - Constant antimatter experimentation

Undetermined amount days before - Explosion on the moon, Korosensei's escape and Yukimura sensei's death

Start of 'Assassination Classroom'

'Preventing the capture of the God of Death is not a good idea, apart from the fact that the experiments would continue with another poor guy, the lack of interaction with Yukimura-sensei will make it so Korosensei never comes to exist' Nagisa thought. 'The first change must be done right before Yukimura-sensei's death, that is what must be prevented. I'll have to figure out how to do it, infiltrating a high security research lab will probably be ridiculously hard.'

With the foundations of his plan taking shape, Nagisa hid away the paper where he wrote it and decided to go see how everything was, after all he still hadn't seen his... mother... He realized that these first few years were not going to be fun. He wondered if he could survive them.

-Akari-

Pain, the first thing she felt was pain. Akari wasn't sure why she felt pain, but she did. That is, until her headache softened enough for her to even think. Then she remembered. She remembered Nagisa, Ritsu, the car and... the _**blood**_ , so much blood. She was not hit directly so she was still conscious, even if just a bit and she saw a lot of crimson blood. Her blood, Nagisa's blood, the driver's blood on the windshield. And then she passed out. She wonders where she is now, is she in the hospital? Is she dead? Is Nagisa dead? Ritsu was also with them, was she destroyed? So many questions and her headache is only now waning enough to even see. She looked around and discovered she was in her old house, where she used to live with her sister. That just brought back bitter memories, but right now she just wanted answers, how did she get here? Why was she here?

She was sprawled out on the floor, so she started pushing herself up, only to find out that she was suffering from the same problem Nagisa did, though she didn't know that. After a lot of tumbling around and crawling she finally managed to get herself to stand up and started half walking, half stumbling to her shelves to get something with which to support herself with. She walked, her long black hair waving around, her le- ' **WAIT A MINUTE** , black hair?! But I started dyeing it green again after I started my relationship with Nagisa! This makes less and less sense every minute...' More confused than before, Akari grabs a broom she had there for cleaning and stumbles towards the bathroom, still a bit weirded out with the fact that her body was not complying with her orders.

When she got to the bathroom, she almost tripped on floor, the completely empty floor! She really needed to sort out her body. Then she looked at the mirror and stared, stared, and stared. 'M-m-my **chest is flat again!** ' She looked at the mirror in horror. 'No, no, no, it can't be happening, not again! It had finally grown!' She then realized that she had a bigger problem than that. She looked like a child. She is most definitely not supposed to look like a kid.

Panicked she went back into her room and looked at her calendar. 30th of August, 20XX, was the date written. This, could it be real? This meant that things could be changed. Nagisa was alive, Korosensei was alive and... Aguri was alive. Thinking about the possibility of saving her sister made her heart leap with joy and relief, like a burden she didn't know she was carrying was suddenly lifted of her shoulders. She would be able to make it right!

She heard a door opening and her breathing stopped. 'Could it be? How will I even talk to her, it has been so long! Oh God, how can I face her...'

She steeled her nerves and walked out of her room. Step by step, her mind already getting used to her old body, just like riding a bicycle after a long time without using it, she walked to the front door. Her breath hitched and her eyes watered at what she saw. There stood her sister, alive, breathing, no blood , no torn clothing.

"Hi Akari, I'm home." Aguri said before noticing something was wrong. "Are you ok? Are you hurt?"

Akari couldn't control herself and ran, though stumbling a bit, towards her sister. She hugged her with all the strenght her eight year old body had and cried, though this time, she cried of joy, the immeasurable joy that she felt at seeing her sister alive. Aguri kept asking her what was wrong, wooried that something had happened to her. Akari decided to ease her worries. "Nothing nee-chan, just a nightmare I had, it's ok now." And she smiled, smiled like she hadn't in years. 'It will all be ok now, I will save them all, Yanagisawa will not succeed in his plans, just you wait nee-chan, Nagisa, Korosensei, I will save us all.'

-Ritsu-

She felt... something. That is all she knew. She wasn't used to feeling this, this was not logical, she could only deduce that this was what humans called pain from the descriptions her classmates gave her. This made no sense, no AI, not even sentient AIs felt pain, apart from emotional pain. She felt confused, was this what happened when a sentient non-human being 'died'? But she didn't feel dead, she still felt like she was somewhere, just... isolated.

She started searching the system she was located in for information, taking care not to alarm the outside world in case she had been somehow kidnapped. What she found made her very confused. The system she was in was familiar, it was the weapons platform she used to be in, just a bit, what could it be called... incomplete? More questions and less answers than she started with, she was not used to this. She had access to enormous amounts of information, being isolated was new, and scary. She kept searching for information until she came across the date... This was simply not possible, time travel defied all knowledge, especially in a situation like a car crash. Such an accident would never have produced enough energy for said event to happen. Thus she concluded that what happened was illogical. She still had a hazy memory of the time she had little more awareness than a normal computer, so she could conclude that it would take 1 more year until she was first connected to the outside world, until then she would have to bide her time, plan her escape.

That decision made, she started making plans. She would have to be quick and stealthy so no one detected the information escaping to the internet. She would also have to leave a copy of herself, although less intelligent so as to not arouse suspicion among the scientists. After escaping she would have to search for the others. If she had been sent back by the accident, then maybe Nagisa and Akari had too. That was worth investigating. The three of them would be able to fix everything. They would be able to prevent unnecessary deaths and guarantee an happy ending. It wouldn't be easy, but it would be done, they could not fail, not after being granted a second chance by whoever it was that decided they deserved it.

Soon she would find her friends, the ones who made her feel human, who made her feel alive, and they would have fun again. After all, the assassination classroom would again begin and this time, they would be ready for it.

Knowing this, she started hibernating, a half-sleep mode where she would still be aware enough to plan things and respond to any emergencies, and set the timer to wake up in one year.

Thus 3 people, mostly unaware of eachother and eachother's plans, started preparing for the future, to fix the events to come and finally have their happy ending. Nothing would be able to stop them from regaining the joy they once lost, which brought colour to their lives. No one would stop them because they are assassins, students of the God of Death and as such powers to be reckoned.

The three time travelers would bide their time, plan for the future and save the ones they care about, because otherwise, their failure would be too costly on their sanity. They could not bear losing their loved ones again, and they would never accept such an outcome.


	3. Chapter 2 - Adaptation and Reunion

_My third chapter! I hope you like it. As always, do comment on what you think I could have done better, constructive criticism is always appreciated._

 _I might write another chapter or not this weekend, depending on the time I have available._

 _Also, I hate this website's formatting. It is so inflexible. AO3 most definitely wins on that department, it is much less frustrating._

 _-(6 months later)-_

 **-Nagisa (P.O.V.)-**

It has been half a year since it happened. At first it was quite hard to adapt, after all behaving like a kid after living an adult life can be confusing, my mother looked at me oddly the many times I slipped up, she even tried to see if I was getting sick a few times. My mother's obsession with making me a girl wasn't helping at all.

In the end, I managed to act convincingly enough for her not to examine me more thoroughly. I was off the hook, so using all the skills I learned from Koro-sensei, I started gathering information. Very few people ever suspect a kid from doing anything suspicious, so I just used their preconceptions to my advantage, I watched Yanagisawa's lab a few times, recorded the times the staff entered and left their jobs, gathered info in what I thought they did (I might be a good assassin, but my computer skills are not good enough to get more in-depth information), looked for potential entry and escape areas for infiltration, checked for security measures, all of the information anyone would ever need to enter undetected and then leave.

Out of that investigation, which lasted about 2 months, I counted about 50 staff members, of those 10 were guards, 6 of them on night shift, and they were quite well armed, about 30 were scientists, 4 were there for cleaning and that kinda stuff, and then there were 5 unidentified. The last one was obviously, Yanagisawa himself, the vermin.

I then decided to search for my classmates, it wouldn't hurt to know more about them. Some were easy to find, like Sugino, Maehara, Okajima and Terasaka, among others. Who would have thought that Okajima wasn't always a perv, and that Terasaka was actually a quite friendly child. I befriended some of them again, but not all, it wouldn't do to change time too much. Others were much harder to track down, like Karma, Itona and... Akari. Karma was, unsurprisingly, a mischievious kid, Itona was quite lonely and Akari, well Akari just couldn't be found apart from a few glimpses, who would have thought that she was such a busy child, maybe she was already an actress? Well, Yukimura-sensei though was much easier to find, already teaching, though not at Kunugigaoka. I gained a certain insight from this investigation, my classmates are tiny! I am no longer one of the tiniest ones, and though I will become it again, for now it is satisfying.

Anyways, I have to keep planning, and try to actually befriend Akari.

My plan has only gotten one new addition in the past six months, I came to the conclusion that for everything to stay relatively unchanged until the crucial moments, I will have to fake Yukimura-sensei's death at the right moment for Koro-sensei to really believe it and then relocate her somewhere safe. I will have to get better information about the insides of the laboratory facility in order to execute my plan.

 **-Akari (P.O.V.)-**

These few months have made me happier than I've been in a while. Having my sister around, alive, has filled a hole in my heart I didn't know I had. I mostly spent time with Aguri, going to school, and preparing for whatever I may need to do to ensure an happy ending.

I watched that damned laboratory, trying to find a way to infiltrate it. My plan is still no well defined but I know I must gather information. That was Nagisa's forte, not mine, I wish he was with me... Anyways, I almost made a few mistakes, some guards spotted me but I managed to make them think I was just a curious child. The real problem came when I saw Yanagisawa, that **worm** , my only desire was to **rip him apart** for all he did. My heart was calling for his blood, but I knew as a child that I wouldn't be able to do much so I managed to reign in my temper. Someday, yes, someday I will have that satisfaction. I really need to control myself, ever since the incident with the tentacles, my temper never returned to normal and has been a little more volatile.

Then came the scouting for a position as an actress, I had completely forgotten that it happened this soon. Well, soon Haruna Mase would be reborn, I could probably use the funds from my career to help further my plans. It was a pretty busy job, but I liked it and acting gave me good skills for assassination. The scouters were extremely impressed with how good I was, but I declined their major offers and kept to the ones I started with, it wouldn't do to change too much at first after all.

I also happened to look for my classmates, at first I had wanted nothing to do with them but they wormed their way into my heart and class 3-E became my second family, so I wanted to see them again. Something I found curious was that Nagisa was friends with a lot of them. I expected Karma and maybe Sugino, but this many was strange. I never took him for a very sociable person as a child because of his mother and all that. But he looked so CUTE a kid, someday I will tease him relentlessly about this, I just needed to take some photos... I decided not to approach them, I would probably blush non-stop and I don't was Nagisa to think I'm weird. Still, he is such a cute child...

Thanks to my skills as an assassin, about 3 and a half months after the incident I noticed someone was watching me. I couldn't figure out who or where but I did feel his or her stare. Did I get a stalker because of my performance in the audition? That would have been far too soon. Something is amiss and I don't know what so I must be careful. I have no idea if it is friend or foe but this is most definitely not normal. Until I identify the stalker I'll have to try my best to avoid him or her.

I must make sure nothing goes wrong, all my friends depend on it.

 **-Ritsu (P.O.V.)-**

I have rarely left my hibernation mode. There's not much to do as an aware AI trapped in a sub-par machine with no access to outside information. The only times I have awoken were to hide myself better, as once of twice the scientists probed a little deeper and almost found me. I must be careful or they'll deem me as dangerous and keep me isolated to study further.

In these 6 months, on the few moments of clarity I've had I analyzed the stories Koro-sensei told us and some of the facts I dug up. As such, I have concluded that in order to obtain the best possible outcome there are various steps necessary:

\- Koro-sensei must be saved;

\- Yukimura-sensei must live;

\- All the classes's problems must be solved;

\- All possible threats must be neutralized ahead of time;

\- The future may not be altered too much until the start of 'Assassination Classroom'.

With these steps, and some more that may latter be decided, the best possible ending will happen and all my friends will be happy.

Six more months until I can make my escape. Until then, I'll wait.

 _-(One year after the incident)-_

 **-Ritsu-**

She could feel it. It was time, the scientists were opening the ports and connecting the cables and soon she would have access to the outside world.

The scientists finished the connection and configured everything when suddenly there was a massive information upload to the internet. They panicked and disconnected the cables, trying to check what happened. To their confusion there was nothing out of place, the AI was still there, still the same as usual, and there was no sign of any data package that could have been sent. They decided to chalk it up to a bug in the system while trying to connect to the internet and decided to run a few more tests before reconnecting their creation to the world.

 **-Ritsu (P.O.V.)-**

I did it. It went perfectly, using the extremely fast internet connection the lab possessed I managed to upload myself to the internet in a split second and they would never manage to find me. Now that I have access to the rest of the world again I can begin my plan but first I need to confirm a few theories. I need to know if I'm alone in this or if I have anyone to help me in the physical world.

Thus I decided that the fastest way to do it would be setting a chat room with special code names that only they would recognize and contact them. If they have no memory they'll probably chalk it up to a prank, but if it's them, then I will have a great help in fixing the future.

I created the chatroom and hacked into their phones to forcibly connect them to it. Then I named all three of us different names and sent a message:

 **Humanized Assassin AI:** Hello, do you happen to know Koro-sensei?

And then I waited.

 **-Nagisa (P.O.V.)-**

I was walking home after spending time with a few of my friends when my phone vibrated. Thinking it was a message from my mother I opened it and my mind went blank because of the message I saw. With my hands shaking I answered:

 **Humanized Assassin AI:** Hello, do you happen to know Koro-sensei?

 **Deadly Snake:** How do you know that name?! Who are you?

 **-Akari (P.O.V.)-**

Something that I would never expect happened. I was relaxing at home after a day acting for a drama when my cellphone ringed. I thought it was my sister wanting to ask me something so I checked the phone and froze after seeing what it was. After taking a deep breath, my hope rising, I typed:

 **Humanized Assassin AI:** Hello, do you happen to know Koro-sensei?

 **Deadly Snake:** How do you know that name?! Who are you?

 **Mistaken Sister:** Who are you guys? How could you know that?

 **-Chatroom-**

 **Humanized Assassin AI:** Hello, do you happen to know Koro-sensei?

 **Deadly Snake:** How do you know that name?! Who are you?

 **Mistaken Sister:** Who are you guys? How could you know that?

 **Humanized Assassin AI:** It seems I wasn't wrong, you guys came back too, I'm Ritsu if you couldn't guess.

 **Mistaken Sister:** Ritsu?! You came back too? I thought I was alone! So Deadly Snake is Nagisa right? I'm Akari by the way.

 **Deadly Snake:** Yes I am. This is awesome, it makes my plans much easier.

 **Humanized Assassin AI:** Calm down, before discussing plans any further we should try to find a place so we can actually talk instead of using this chat room.

 **Deadly Snake:** We know the forest around the classroom where we used to be so and it is secluded so we can meet there.

 **Mistaken Sister:** I'll meet you at the base of the mountain Nagisa, I'll see you there.

 **Deadly Snake:** Ok, see you Akari! I missed you.

 _-(At the base of the mountain)-_

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari-**

As I reached the mountain I spotted Akari there, waiting. She was so small and her hair was still black, but she was still Akari... the same Akari who I put through my depression, forcing her to take care of me. I was half considering running away so as to not confront her about it but I steeled myself and kept walking.

As I approached her she noticed me and smiled at me. It hurt, it really hurt knowing that I did all that to her and she still smiled at me, still looked at me with so much love.

"Nagisa, are you ok?" She asked me. "Did something happen? You look awful!"

I stopped in front of her, steeled myself and said: "I-I-I I'm sorry. I made you waste your time with me, worry about me and you even got hit by a car all because of me. I'm so sorry for what I put you through."

I was expecting her to scold me, tell me that I'm an idiot for all I did. What I did not expect was to find myself in her embrace.

"Nagisa, do you know what the most heart wrenching moment of my life is?" I shaked my head negatively. "It was the moment right after we got hit by the car and before I lost consciousness. It was seeing you covered in blood, unmoving, not even breathing and the sudden realization that even if I survived you would be gone, at that moment I wished to die, so I could join you in the afterlife. I am not mad at you Nagisa, for anything. I was so worried about you, how you were falling into despair. If we had to do it all over again, I would still follow you and try to cheer you up, because I love you. **Nothing** will change that. I don't want to **ever** lose you again, so please, don't put yourself down for what you felt, I would probably be even worse than you in that situation."

"Akari, I-I, thank you. Thank you for putting up with me even when most would not. I love you too." And I meant every word I said.

We shared a brief kiss, and though it was a bit weird because of our 9 year old bodies, it still conveyed our feelings to eachother. For the first time in a long while, I think I felt a semblance of peace, finally my guilt for the accident was waning a bit.

"Let's go Nagisa, Ritsu is probably waiting for us to contact her."

 _-(In a clearing in the middle of the forest)-_

 **-Nagisa, Akari(P.O.V.) & Ritsu-**

It surprised me that Nagisa felt so guilty for what happened, but his fear of me being mad at him were completely unfounded, I love him and unless he did something much, much worse than what happened, that would never change.

After conforting Nagisa, we went into a small clearing in the forest and contacted Ritsu.

"Hey Ritsu, we're already in private, you can speak." I said

"Hi! It's good to see you guys, it's been so long!"

Nagisa was the one to answer. "It's good to see you too Ritsu, knowing that the two of you are here with me makes me very happy. Now some of the problems I couldn't solve in my plan can probably be easily resolved."

I decided to give my own input. "We should probably first expose what we all found first, before sticking to any plan."

"Yeah that's probably a good idea. Plus, with Ritsu's access tot he internet and anything connected to a network we can make our plans much better."

Thus we started discussing our finds, a conversation that lasted until it was already night.


	4. Chapter 3 - Plans, Bonding, Junior High

And another chapter out. Sorry for the late release but I've been a bit busy. As always I hope you enjoy reading and please do comment your opinions.

Just a warning: Next weekend I won't be able to post a new chapter because I'll be busy on a school trip to Switzerland. I'm sorry to those who wanted another chapter but you will have to wait.

 _._

 _-(At the clearing)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari and Ritsu-**

Finally after one long year I have allies and probably the solution to my plan's problems.

I'm so glad Akari and Ritsu came to the past with me. Just the thought of having lost Akari and possibly never having her love me again made me feel an heart-wrenching pain. But with the two of them I'm sure evrything will be ok. I can't let myself get depressed, too many people's futures are riding on our actions.

Ritsu was the first to start talking, she decided to tell us the main objectives in our operation for an happy future.

"In the time I've been hibernating I was not completely inactive. With the limited access to information I possessed and my memories I found a few things that **MUST** be done if we wish to be successful." She then started listing them. "The first and most obvious objective is saving Korosensei. This will be the objective the whole operation will be centered around but not more crucial than any of the others. The second one is preventing your sister's death. That incident caused a lot of pain to both you and Korosensei." She said looking at Akari. "As the E-class, our classmates had a lot of problems. We can count on Korosensei to solve those but we can also help him. We must also neutralize any threats ahead of time. If people like Yanagisawa, the false God of Death and Takaoka are not put out of commission we risk an ending exactly like the original timeline's. I have also determined that everything must remain the same, or seemingly remain the same until the beginning of 'Assassination Classroom'.Do either of you have anything to add or any beneficial information?"

Akari spoke before I could. " I have been doing some scouting of the laboratory. I can also ask my sister some seemingly innocuous questions in order to allow us access to inside information. Plus with my skills as an actress it would be easy to deceive some guards."

With everyone having spoken their part I decided to give my own two cents. "I have also scouted a bit and I've been memorizing the guard shifts and the camera positions. Thought Ritsu can probably do that better once she hacks into the system. There is also something that came back with me to the past. That vial Okuda gave me as a gift is hidden in my room." As I said this their eyes widened. "Apart from that I have a point to add to the plan. We have to 'kill' Yukimura-sensei." I added gesturing with my fingers to make them realize I was saying that figuratively.

Akari was startled by that. "What do you mean Nagisa?!"

"My idea was to make it look like your sister had died. Her death and last words were what caused Korosensei to become our teacher and the person, err well octupus we respected. In order for that to happen we must not only make Korosensei think she is dead but also make Yukimura-sensei herself think that she is dying so her 'last words' are delivered."

"That is a very good point. And from what I see, the only way to keep the future relatively unchanged until the point we want. The problem now is how do we make such a situation happen." Ritsu said.

Akari was obviously a bit uncomfortable with the idea but recognized the necessity. " Well, first things first, we need you to hack into the laboratory and find every single security measure they have and give us a detailed report. Both electronic and human measures must be catalogued. Then you should take control of the electronic security so as to allow us an easier time when the operation commences. With our lack of detailed information, you will also have to keep an eye on odd behaviour from the scientists so we can be prepared for the operation. The only thing I remember was that it ocurred during night time."

I pulled out my trusty notebook and started noting down our task list. After a bit more discussion back and forth I decided to add to it.

"I have a plan on how to fake Yukimura-sensei's death, though Ritsu will have to do it. Neither me nor Akari are proficient in long range weaponry so we are going to have to use Ritsu's instructions to build her a physical 'body', which will probably be just a moving turret platform with a sniper rifle, in order for her to do it. With her hacking skills obtaining the materials will probably not be that hard. Anyways, my plan consists in shooting Yukimura-sensei with a pellet filled with blood and some kind of drug mix that can be absorbed through the skin. The blood would be to both make the 'death' more believable and to make Korosensei panic and not notice the details that we are unable to cover. The drug mix would both make Yukimura-sensei feel like she was stabbed in order for her to believe the is dying and after some time to induce a false-death state. Then we will need to safely remove her 'corpse' from the area, hide her somewhere safe and then bring her back. We will need to fid a way to explain this to her but we'll figure that out later."

Akari gave us the way to obtain the pellet. "We could use my acting and infiltration skills, coupled with Ritsu's help to snag some blood from the hospital. As for the drugs... Ritsu, do you think you can find substances or solutions that can give us the desired effects? Then you'll just need to hack into laboratories and divert said chemicals to us."

"With a bit of research I should be able to find the desired chemicals and deliver them so that problem is solved. Anyways, it has gotten quite late so you probably need to go back to your families so as to not arouse suspicion."

We both agreed and left the mountain while Ritsu started her part in our plans.

.

 _-(Base of the mountain)-_

.

 **-Nagisa & Akari(P.O.V.)-**

I and Nagisa chatted a bit on our way down the mountain. Right before we parted ways I decided to invite Nagisa over for dinner.

"Hey Nagisa, seeing as it is already quite late and we haven't eaten anything in awhile why don't you come eat dinner with me and my sister?"

Nagisa looked surprised, then thinkative and finally, he agreed.

"Ok, I think that would be nice. Just let me phone my mother to let her know and then we'll go."

I watched as Nagisa moved a bit away to speak to his mother. I remembered that at this age Nagisa had a bit of a dysfunctional relationship with his mother. I grew worried when he frowned but after a few seconds and a few more words back and forth he looked at me and nodded. I decided to call my sister to tell her we would have a guest. She sounded delighted when she heard I was bringing a friend over and teased me about having a boyfriend so soon. Oh, if only she knew.

Nagisa joined me again and we walked to my house chatting quite animatedly.

.

 _-(Yukimura Household)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari & Aguri-**

We arrived at Akari's house and her sister let us in. It made me happy to see Yukimura-sensei alive after so long. Even if she wasn't our teacher for very long, she was still kind and never gave up on us.

She greeted us at the door, though she made a mistake that left me completely red. "Welcome back Akari-chan. Oh, and this must be Nagisa-chan, I thought Akari was bringing a boy." My brain stopped working for a bit as it tried to comprehend her words.

As comprehension dawned on me I couldn't help but shout. "I'm a **boy**!" With great emphasis on the word boy. Dammit mom! Why do you need to do this to me... To add insult to injury I could hear Akari's not so subtle giggles in the background. She must be having so much fun with this situation.

"Oh, sorry Nagisa. I hope you can forgive me. Well let me introduce myself as we started on the wrong foot, I'm Aguri your friend's sister."

"I-t's ok. You're not the first person to make that mistake. It was just on the spur of the moment."

"Great, come in, dinner is ready and we don't want it to get cold."

Akari couldn't resist whispering teasingly to me. "Come on Nagisa- _ **chan**_ , the food is getting cold." She proceeded to giggle uncontrollably again.

The dinner was pleasant. Yukimura-sensei is a very nice host and we all happily chatted. I kind of wished my house was like this, maybe I wouldn't have the problems with my mom then. Akari noticing my mood becoming sullen nudged me, smiled and comforted me. She always knows what to say to make me feel even just a little bit better. If only I hadn't been so depressed back then... No! I can't allow myself to think like this! Depression is not going to help and will hurt Akari too.

After dinner we went to Akari's room, after a bit more of Yukimura-sensei's teasing. We spent some time together, just basking in eachother's presence, making small chat and remembering the many good times we had with our classmates. Overall it left me feeling very happy. Akari's presence is calming and I can just feel the overwhelming love she has for me. I guess I was too focused pitying myself before to notice.

As I was leaving, after Yukimura-sensei said goodbye and left us alone, Akari managed to sneak a kiss on my lips. It still leaves me completely red but she doesn't fare much better. We said our last goodbyes and I went back home with only one thought in my mind. Thank God I have Akari with me.

.

 _-(During the following 3 years)-_

.

 **-Narrator's P.O.V.-**

Nagisa, Akari and Ritsu spent a very busy 3 years. Nagisa and Akari coping with redoing school, preparing for their operation and hanging out with their old/new friends, coupled with Akari's job as an actress kept them very busy.

Nagisa dealt with his mother obsession with him being female but was able to curb it a bit and make his mother less volatile. He also enjoyed spending time with Akari, sneaking kisses here and there, and just generally enjoying eachother's company. He introduced her to the friends he remade and they took to hanging out from time to time, usually watching Karma so he didn't go too overboard in his mischief, playing baseball with Sugino, making sure Itona was not alone, and just having fun with all of them. Also something horrible happened that Nagisa and Akari couldn't have predicted. Akabane Karma met Nakamura Rio far, far too soon. They became the King and Queen of mischief. Nagisa wondered what kind of monsters he created when he introduced them. Many people were never the same after witnessing the pair in action and many others had constant nightmares with them involved.

Akari apart from spending time with Nagisa and Co. also spent a lot more time with her sister,which made her happy. Her job as an actress allowed her to gain contacts and earn some needed money. She was genuinely happy, her family was back, the one she loved was getting better after his depression and so many things could be fixed. She tended to thank whatever entity sent them back repeatedly every night before sleeping. Because whoever or whatever it was gave her a gift bigger than any material gift she could have gotten.

Ritsu, together with Nagisa and Akari kept watch on the laboratory and the various governments and assassin organizations. It wouldn't do to be underprepared. She also enjoyed many talks she had with both of her fellow time-travellers. After feeling bored one day after another round of surveillance she discovered the amazing world of virtual entertainment. From things she could watch, to the billions of stories she could read and games she could play, she found the internet to be a very fun place. Apart from all that, she also helped from the shadows to solve a few crimes by anonymous contribution. After all, if she had this much power, it wouldn't do not to help the people a bit.

All in all, they were three very fulfilling and happy years, but now started a new phase in their second life. the first year in Kunugigaoka Junior High School, which at this time was still under the discriminating regime of Asano Gakuhō. These were going to be a few trying years but soon Assassination Classroom would again begin.

.

 _-(First day of the first year of junior highschool)-_

.

 _-(Gate of Kunugigaoka Junior High School)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari-**

We stood in front of the gate, steeling ourselves for the years to come and the challenges we would face.

Akari decided that she wanted to join me in junior high. Her sister transferred recently to teaching class 3-E and was surprised that she wanted to join the school where she taught. She was even more surprised when Akari told her that even though her stage name was Haruna Mase, some people might still recognize her as Akari and she didn't want the worship so she decided to join with an allias and a different look. Some green hair paint, two pigtails, a name change and Kayano Kaede was reborn.

I turned to Akari, err Kaede, I really need to get used to calling her by this name again. She turned towards me. Steel in our eyes and I said:

"Let's go, our new life is just starting, and this time, we will succeed! Our friends' lives are in our palms, so we must make sure everything goes well."

She smiled, pecked me on the lips which left me bright red and answered. "Yes, let's go, towards our new future."

And we stepped into the school grounds, our heads held high, with great hope for our future.


	5. Chapter 4 - Suspicion and Development

_Hello! Once again, I'm sorry for missing last weekends chapter but there was nothing I could do. But rest assured, I won't abandon you!_

 _As promised here is the new chapter of 'The joy we once lost'. I hope you like it and as always, do give me some constructive criticism in order for me to improve._

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _-(First day of the first year of junior highschool)-_

.

 _-(Kunugigaoka Junior High School's main Gymnasium)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Kaede-**

We were all shepherded into the gym for the entrance ceremony. Looking around I could see many familiar faces, our old classmates, the Five Virtuosos, some random main class students we met during our school life. Seeing everyone gathered like this reassured me that this was all real, it gave me hope to succeed our mission. I was put into class 1-A due to my future knowledge getting good grades was easy, though I couldn't exaggerate or I would arouse suspicion. With me in this class were also Akari, err... Kaede, I really need to get used to this, Karma, Rio (these years are going to be hell with these two) and Okuda from our old class, Asano Gakushū and Koyama Natsuhiko were also our classmates together with a few more random students.

The teachers made us form lines, the new students in front and the old students in the back, the current class 3-E was secluded on the right side looking gloomy, Yukimura-sensei at their sides trying to make them feel better. The discrimination was obvious, with many of the main campus students sneering and mocking 3-E's students. I now knew why the headmaster created this system but that didn't make it any better and looking at the situation made my blood boil. I was starting to unconsciously leak bloodlust and putting some students on edge when Aka- Kaede grabbed my sleeve and brought me out of my anger.

"Are you ok? I don't like seeing them like this either but there is nothing we can do for now. When the time comes we will once again make the headmaster see that he is wrong but for now you need to control yourself or we might get ourselves into massive trouble." A-Kaede grabbed my hand and squeezed lightly, while speaking soothingly. "So calm down Nagisa, don't let your emotions rule you, we are trained assassins so just remember our training, ok?"

Kaede is like my guardian angel, whenever I'm about to do something idiotic she talks me out of it. I really can't begin to express how grateful I am that she is in my life. "Ok, thanks Kaede, I really don't know what I would do without you to help me."

She couldn't help but giggle and throw a jab at me. "Probably brooding around, doing nothing productive."

I could only answer by smiling sheepishly as I had no retort to what she said. Truer words were never uttered before, I already caught myself many time falling back into a sullen mood, only perking up when I remembered that Kaede was with me.

At that moment the speakers were turned on with their characteristic annoying sound and I was surprised to find Asano Gakuhō himself facing the students. He looked over the crowd but his eyes stopped on me for a bit. We stared into eachother's eyes and I knew that I caught his attention which could turn problematic. He did the same with Kaede though not for as long and I started sweating, we had most definitely caught his interest and that is never a good thing. His gaze wandered by the students a bit more before he started speaking.

"I want to welcome you all to Kunugigaoka Junior High. Some of you might not know me so I'll introduce myself, I'm Asano Gakuhō, the headmaster of this school." That affirmation drew a bunch of gasps and exclamations from the few students who were unaware of his identity. "Today starts a new phase of your life, one in many of your development towards adulthood. In this school we value hardwork and absolute dedication towards your studies. We only accept the best and for those, the best equipment and teachers will be provided. Anyone who drops below our standards, be it by grades, behaviour or rule breaking will be sent in their third year to class 3-E on top of the mountain isolated from the rest. Those banished will not have access to the same quality of resources or education as us in the main campus do. To be allowed back in those students will have to demonstrate that they are worthy of it through the exams. Nobody wants to be in Class-E as they are those who are lazy and possess no future ahead of them." Gakuhō spoke with his usual smile and both me, Kaede, Karma and a few others could see the manipulation is his words and mannerisms, his objective through the discrimination of the E class students. Whispers filled the gym and the students of the current E class looked, if possible, even more depressed.

"To end this ceremony, I would like to wish you good luck in these next few years and hope you do well, in whatever objectives you may have at this school, school-related or not." I couldn't help but wince at that jab. "As a final note, please do enjoy your next few years learning what is necessary for a successful adulthood."

I had to control myself so as to not yell at him at how unfair and ridiculous his system and propaganda was. My anger just grew at each word he spouted and it was threatening to boil over but Kaede silenced me with one look. There would be time to fix all this later.

"Classes will start in 1 hour, though today you will only have homeroom so as to be informed of you schedule, rules and any events to come. You can go now, you school life awaits you."

.

 _-(Classroom - Class 1-A)-_

.

 **-Nagisa & Kaede(P.O.V.)-**

We were lead to our classroom and told to sit while the teacher took attendance. I absentmindedly answered when the teacher called my name as I was dealing with something else in my mind. Nagisa looked very on edge, like he might explode at any moments notice. He usually does not behave like this so something must be bothering him, bothering him a **lot**. I suspect it has to do with relieving his time at Kunugigaoka. All of those speeches by the headmaster are getting to him and making him restless because they are basically spitting on Koro-sensei's ideals.

I decided that for now being around Nagisa and talking to him should help soothe his anger.

"Nagisa, are you really ok? You look ready to blow..." I whispered to him.

Nagisa looked startled, probably surprised that I noticed. He must really have been trying to control himself.

"Y-yeah. Just a bit angry at the headmaster, nothing more." He tried to soothe my worries, while avoiding looking at me in the eyes, though his attempt was quite bad as it didn't hide anything from me.

"Nagisa, I know you better than that! You shouldn't attempt to hide how you feel from me!" I scolded him. "I can see the anger in your eyes and the way you twitch sometimes. Please Nagisa, just let me help you."

"I-I... ok, I was being an idiot. I didn't want you to worry. I'm sorry for lying to you, but his speeches really **angered** me. Just seeing him step on everything Koro-sensei taught us makes me mad."

"Don't worry, I'm here with you every step of the way and we'll make sure to fix everything."

Nagisa just gave me a small, but genuine smile to which I answered in kind.

And the moment was interrupted by a rather loud cough and a voice directed at us. "If you two lovebirds are done, can you please pay attention to my class, or do you need a room?" The teacher said, looking rather annoyed.

Both me and Nagisa just blushed fiercely while trying to ignore the snickering from our classmates, the terrifyingly devious grins from both Karma and Rio and the disappointed looks Gakushū was sending us.

After that humiliating moment class proceeded normally and we were excused for the day.

I had something related to my job to do today so I said goodbye to Nagisa and went on my way after a slightly longer than usual kiss. I still feel giddy every time we do it.

.

 _-(Local Park)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Karma-**

After saying goodbye to Kaede I decided to go home. While I was leaving the school premises Karma approached me and asked if I wanted to hang out so we went to a park that was close to school. On the way there we chatted a bit about random stuff, from our opinion of Kunugigaoka to Karma's pranks.

After we arrived at a more isolated part of the part Karma's face gained a disturbing grin and spoke. "Soooo... You got yourself a girlfriend, huh?"

I just spluttered and tried to deny it. "W-what are you talking about? I have no girlfriend, that was just the teacher scolding us!"

Karma's grin became even wider. "Hmmmm, so that hidden kiss before Kaede left was just my imagination huh?"

I felt my face heating up and wished I could dig a hole to hide in. Karma just laughed at my predicament.

"It's too easy to tease you Nagisa. You should be more careful, someone could have seen you two."

Even though I was embarrassed I noticed, by Karma's demeanor, that this was just small talk before he got to what he really wanted to talk about.

"Hey Nagisa, what was it that made you so angry today? I don't think I've ever seen you so close to blowing up."

"I just hate that school's system. Discrimination like that should never happen. It is a disgrace to education!"

"Then you should have just joined a different school. Nobody forced you to join Kunugigaoka.!

"I had my reasons. There are things that must be done."

"Ooooh, so serious all of a sudden. Was the reason your girlfriend?" Said Karma in a teasing tone.

I just spluttered and didn't deign that question with an answer, simply moving away back to the main area of the park

We kept walking through the park, chatting about various random topics and I watched Karma pull a few pranks on the unsuspecting passerby. Let it be said that many people went home feeling a bit of pain.

As we left the park we said goodbye to eachother and split off to go to our own homes.

.

 **-Karma(P.O.V.)-**

I kept wondering about Nagisa's weird behaviour, it just wouldn't leave my mind.

He looked so angry at the entrance ceremony, and that dark feeling that was coming from him before Kaede grabbed him... I felt absolutely terrified for a moment. And then he was still angry for a while. There is something more to his anger than what he told me. And his supposed reasons to join Kunugigaoka are a mystery too.

Just what are you hiding Nagisa?

.

 _-(4 weeks later - Saturday)-_

.

 _-(Akari's room)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari & Ritsu-**

School had been as boring as always. Relearning subjects that you know by heart is terribly tedious. Hanging out with my friends and Akari was nice though, something to break me off the monotony of daily life.

The days were just a routine: Wake up, go to school, leave school, hang out with friends, go somewhere with Akari and spend time together, go back home and sleep. Apart from the weekends it was all the same. Today though, Ritsu called us so we could discuss the progress of our plans. Yukimura-sensei happened to be visiting a friend this weekend so we decided to reunite in Akari's room.

"So, Ritsu what progress have you got on the things we needed?" I decided to ask.

"So far I have obtained the drug to induce pain and an opening for Akari to smuggle the blood out of the hospital. I have also obtained the materials for the turret, which were shipped to you house through untraceable means Akari. I think I might have an idea of how to make the drugs be absorbed by the skin. The false-death drug still eludes me but I should be able to obtain it sooner or later from one of the many labs throughout the world."

"So with the materials delivered we need to build the turret. Akari do you have any knowledge of mechanics?"

"Nope. Though we know someone who does. If we can convince Itona that the turret will be used for some other purpose, he will build it for us."

"Hmm, indeed, I think that is our best bet right now. Also Akari you should get ready to use the opening Ritsu provided us with. Opportunities like these don't come often and must not be wasted. Now for the infiltration, Ritsu do you have any viable entry and escape plans?"

"The laboratory wing that Koro-sensei is being held on is an extremely high security one. Right now I find no viable entry points. I could start planting viruses in the system to activate on the day of his escape, but that will still take some time. I think our most viable option right now would the the chaos caused by his escape. Oh, also Nagisa, I got that sample of the vial Okuda gave us analysed so we should be able to recreate it if necessary."

Akari looked confused. "Huh? When did you give Ritsu a sample?"

"A few years back, I wanted a safeguard, should the vial we have be destroyed and having Ritsu deal with it would be the easiest way to go about it. She just sent it to a random foreign lab as a 'anonymous contractor' who paid a good sum and they happily did it for us."

Akari pouted. "Oh. I still would have liked to be told about it."

"Don't worry we'll keep you informed of anything else we do." I reassured her. "For now we need to keep an eye open for any odd activity in Yanagisawa's lab and in the international governments. We must be careful because the military does not like people snooping around and if we get caught we might be in very deep trouble. I think we have discussed all new developments of our plans so we might as well end the meeting here."

"Goodbye you two, I'll go back to information gathering." Ritsu said.

"See ya Ritsu." Me and Akari chorused.

.

 _-(1 day later)-_

.

 _-(Yukimura Household)-_

.

 **-Akari(P.O.V.) & Aguri-**

Aguri came home in the evening, when the sky was already darkening. She looked oddly cheerful which got me confused. What friend had she visited that made her so happy? Did she have a boyfriend?! But she's Yanagisawa's fianceé right now...

"Nee-chan you look happy today..." I 'absentmindedly' commented.

"Hmm, you could say so. These past few days I met someone interesting at work. He is a rather odd person but nonetheless fun to hang out with."

Met someone at work? But she was never this cheerful about any colleagues. The only person I think she hadd any fondness about was... My eyes widened for a bit. The only person she became this fond of at work was Korosensei! I decided to prod a bit more.

"So how is this friend of yours? How does he look like?"

"As I said he is rather odd. He didn't live what you could call a normal life and so his personality is quite different from what I'm used to. He also thinks I'm weird. But the way he is makes him interesting and fun to talk with. I'm trying to make him come out of his shell, he fake smiles too much to be healthy. As for how he looks, he is quite handsome, he has dark hair that reaches his nape and dark eyes. His skin is of quite a light colour and he is tall. Apart from that there is not much to say about him. Someday I'll make him smile genuinely!"

I giggled. That sure sounded like how Korosensei used to be before all the experimentation. "I'm sure you'll make him smile nee-chan, you can make everyone happy."

My sister just smiled and laughed a bit at my words. I went to my room to think. My sister was already in contact with Korosensei... At least this didn't change, it would be a disaster if it did. I should tell Nagisa and Ritsu of this development.

I smiled, happy for the events to come. This is already shaping up to be a good future.


	6. Chapter 5 - Friends, life and trickery

_And here I am again, delivering you another chapter of 'The joy we once lost'!_

 _Sorry for the semi-late release but this was a busy weekend and I only had the time to do this now. Though I feel this chapter might be a bit rushed :/ Sorry for that._

 _Also, for those of you who might not think that Ritsu's plan was useful because doing that would just put them on alert, remember that sometimes plans backfire. ;P_

 _So here you have the chapter, enjoy and do remember to leave a comment with your opinion._

 _._

 _-(During the 4 weeks after last chapter)-_

.

 **-General P.O.V.-**

There is one word to describe what both Akari and Nagisa felt towards their classes, and that was **boredom** , complete and utter boredom. Having already been through everything made it so all they were doing in class was listening to Kunugigaoka's horrible teachers rapid fire in a monotone voice a load of knowledge they already knew, Nagisa more so than Akari because of his job as a teacher in Paradise High. Needless to say, they were not happy about this. The teachers sometimes noticed their lack of attention as they often started chatting to relieve the boredom and scolded them, though they were still baffled at how they easily kept up with the class. Classes were most definitely not their favourite place to be.

Apart from that their lives were pretty good. They had already made establish friendships with many of their past classmates, being careful enough not to alter enough about their behaviour that would make it so they would never join class 3-E. They hung out with a lot of them during recess and after class, often going out to eat, sing karaoke or just do something fun. Though they did notice the suspicious glances Karma threw at them from time to time when he thought they weren't looking. Clearly they were not being careful enough. They also sought to spend time with Itona, though he hadn't joined Kunugigaoka yet, in order for him not to feel left out.

These 4 weeks had passed in a blur of the composed of the previously mentioned activities, coupled with planning for the future and nudging Aguri for more information on Korosensei. Though now the school was enveloped in a lighter mood as the end of the first term was approaching and the midterms were done. Students were trying to decide where they would go for their holidays and if they would they would spend time with their friends. All in all the mood was much better than the past 2 weeks, which held the exams.

.

 _-(Beginning of July, 1st year of Junior High)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Kaede & Karma-**

We were walking home after another boring day of horribly boring lessons. Karma had started hanging out with us a lot more, though I suspect that was due to his suspicions of us. I have no idea how much he suspects but both me and Kaede decided to be more careful around him. We were just chatting to pass the time, normal things like how the day had been, anything interesting that happened, or have if we seen some random movie or read some random manga yet. Nothing interesting was being said until Karma asked something.

"So Nagisa, how did you and Kayano meet? Was it in any way interesting?"

I could tell that Karma was probing for secrets so I decided to give him a semi-truthful answer, though not giving away what lie between the lines. "We were classmates a few years back. When we met we instantly got along though it took us quite a while more to actually start dating. In fact, she was the one who styled my hair like this." I said pointing at my pigtails.

Karma just Hmmm'd, clearly disappointed in not having been given anything interesting to work with.

I decided to prod a bit. "What about you? You and Rio seemed pretty close, are you interested in her?"

He hesitated for a bit but then shook his head. " No, we're too similar for anything to actually work out between us. I find Okuda from our class to be more interesting. If only I could pull her out of her shell a bit, maybe I could talk to her more." I actually found that to be funny. So even now Karma was interested in Okuda, I guess some things just don't change. I just didn't expect Karma to actually admit his interest, did our interactions with him change his personality enough so that he would be more open to us? That is something to consider later.

We eventually arrived at Karma's house, said goodbye and continued on to Kaede's house.

.

 **-Karma(P.O.V.)-**

More and more suspicions kept pilling up. Something was off about these two. Many times did I see them talk to people they had only met a few times before like they had known them for a long time. They thought nobody noticed their interactions but I did. I caught them many times discussing their 'plans' but they would quickly hide it when they noticed me. I'm pretty sure they're aware of my suspicions because they are being more and more careful nowadays. I still have no clue what they're hiding but I am pretty sure it is something big. They talked about things like infiltrations, rescues and assassination too often for it to be some small secret. And though that little story Nagisa gave me about where they met was somewhat truthful there was a hint of something more hidden. Maybe if I get ahold of their files it'll tell me something more.

Whatever they're hiding, I'll eventually find it, even if for just the sake of knowing what is going on with my friends. And if I could somehow help, all the better, as they really don't seem like the kind of people to pull off something that would harm a lot of people.

.

 _-(Yukimura Household)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari-**

We arrived at Akari's and after greeting her sister who as always smiled warmly at us (I'm pretty sure that by now she is aware of our relationship), we went to Akari's room.

We laid down on her bed horizontal to it, back against the wall and leaning on each other. It always felt comforting to have her by my side, always making sure that I am not alone. I still believe myself to be extraordinarily lucky to have her. After relaxing for a bit we started talking about random things, ranging from our lives, to our prospects for the future, our friends, our plans or just saying sweet nothings to each other. One part of the conversation did have to do with something important.

"Hey, Nagisa?"

"Yeah?"

"What do we do about Karma? He is starting to get far too suspicious, shouldn't we do something about it?"

"Hmmm, I believe that for now we should just watch and see what he does. I don't believe he has any ill intentions, he is probably just curious about the mystery surrounding us. Maybe if he does come too close to our plans we could recruit him to help, who knows he might even become a great help."

She looked at me worriedly. "Are you really considering telling him the truth? He would probably find us to be insane and I don't know about you, but I don't feel like being locked up."

"I doubt Karma would ever do something like that to either of us, after all we're friends. Besides with so much proof I doubt he would really have much of a reason to mistrust us."

She still looked doubtful but acquiesced. "If you say so, I'll trust in your judgement."

"You'll see, he will eventually become a great ally."

After that little discussion we just laid there passing the time until I had to go home, saying a fond goodbye to Akari before turning my back and walking, once again, towards my house and my, though less agressive, perturbed mother.

.

 _-(2 weeks later - July 14th - First year of Junior High)-_

.

 _-(Yukimura household)-_

.

 **-Akari(P.O.V.) & Aguri-**

There was only a few days left until the end of the first term and the start of our vacation. I planned to spend our free days with Nagisa and the rest of our friends and also spend more time with my sister, the fact that she is still alive still left me ecstatic.

We were now on our couch watching a movie she rented, just a sibling bonding time. Occasionally speaking to each other and just enjoying the other's presence, I really do love my sister. Then the subject of her job at the lab came up and I asked her about her 'new friend'.

"So how is that friend of yours? The one who called you weird?"

"He is ok. Getting him out of his shell is a slow process as he really has difficulty trusting people, but I still enjoy his company. He is different from everyone else there, while all the others are cold, arrogant and many times apathetic if not outright antipathetic. But he can be nice, he is also kinda quirky as I have yet to get him to give me his true name. He makes it so that my job in there is far more fun than before."

"He sounds like an interesting person, I hope I get to meet him someday."

Her expression darkened for a bit, though she quickly smiled again. "I'm sure you will. And when you do you will find him fun to hang out with too."

I gave her a foxy grin and looked at her knowingly. "You sound like you have a crush nee-chan. Have you perhaps finally found someone better than that asshole Yanagisawa?"

She blushed for a bit but grinned at me too. "That coming from the one who is head over heels for Nagisa..."

I ended up blushing too. So Nagisa was right, she did know. "How?"

"I might have caught you sneaking a few kisses here and there, besides you two are always very close. Though try not to make me an aunt too soon."

My face became as red as a tomato and I started spluttering. My sister just giggled at my expression and we decided to just go back to watching the movie. I really should not be this affected by comments like these... I hate having to go through puberty again, damn hormones.

.

 _-(Undefined time frame)-_

.

 _-(Yanagisawa's research facility)-_

.

 **-Yanagisawa(P.O.V.)-**

I was sitting down, watching my latest test subject through the cameras in his chamber. The immense possibilities this could have... I could become worldwide famous! And with this kind of power, I could probably even dominate the world if I was so inclined to do it. Yes, this would indeed be my greatest project.

One of my technicians came in, looking worried. I hope he has a good reason to be here, I asked not to be disturbed.

"S-sir, there might be a problem."

"So? Get on with it, this better be important..."

"W-well, we were monitoring our network and we noticed what might be evidence of a breach, we can't get conclusive evidence but we suspect someone has been monitoring the facility in search of a weapon as they looked for our more volatile experiments, it was probably someone **VERY** skilled in hacking as he or she was almost able to fully erase any evidence of his/her presence. We were unable to track from where the breach came from."

"Hmmm, interesting, you are dismissed."

"Y-yes sir."

The technician bolted right out the door. I smiled, I loved seeing how terrified they were of what I would do to them. Not that they would have to worry about anything more than being fired. I can't make them disappear as easily as someone with no evidence of their existence like the 'God of Death'. But still, this is an interesting development, someone has been spying on my projects... Could it be to steal whatever I find? Maybe sabotage my research... Or they could have taken an interest in my newest subject.

I grinned. A new player entered the game and it would make this far more interesting.

.

 _-(Japanese Ministry of Defense)-_

.

 **-Karasuma(P.O.V.)-**

I was asked to come to work early for a meeting, though I had no idea of why. Many hypothesis came to me. We could be in risk of a war, a terrorist attack or some other defined threat. What I did not expect was having to track an unidentified hacker who the files pertaining to our defense measures.

"So, the reason I was called in was to find whoever entered our systems and left almost undetected, capture whoever it is and interrogate him/her, in case they are a major threat. How do you expect me to do such a thing? Shouldn't our computer experts be taking care of this?"

My supervisor just looked annoyed and answered. "The hack was very, very clean. The only thing we could even ascertain was that there had been indeed an unauthorized access to our systems and to what files, and that is probably due to a simple slip up by the hacker. I need you to investigate any possible threats and try to identify to who the hacker works. Thus this will be a job on the field and as some people might be more... agressive, we are sending you."

I nodded, though still unhappy with what I was assigned to do. "Very well, I'll do it."

"Good, you start tomorrow. Here is an initial compilation of the most immediate identified threats, you could start by investigating those."

I was handed a big file with the information about various criminal groups. This was going to take a long time. But I have a duty to ensure the safety of our country and it's people, and as such I will work towards identifying this threat and neutralizing it. No matter how long it took.

.

 _-(Random server somewhere around the world)-_

.

 **-Ritsu(P.O.V.)-**

I analyzed the results of my work feeling satisfied with them, with the false lead I planted they will be too distracted tracking a non-existent threat to take notice of our plans. This way they'll be too busy hunting a terrorist cell or some more violent yakuza. With these seeds planted I could access the other files and information with little to no problems.

Our future will be ensured even if it means playing around with the governments and labs.


	7. Chapter 6 - Paris and revelations

_Oops. Fanfictionnet is being uncooperative and screwing with my chapters :(_

 _Well I hope it is fixed right now._

 _As always do enjoy this chapter and comment on whatever you found either interesting or lacking._

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _-(End of the 1st Term - Summer Holidays)-_

.

 _-(Yukimura Household - Akari's room)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari & Ritsu-**

Ritsu had called another meeting between us time-travellers. She said she had found something very important that had to be discussed **immediately**. Me and Akari had locked ourselves in her room, waiting with a bit of excitement but also dread for whatever Ritsu had to tell us. The silence was becoming awkward so I decided to speak up.

"I don't think anybody will overhear us here, you can speak Ritsu."

"Oh, I hadn't noticed, sorry. Well, the reason I called you both here was related to Korosensei's experiment."

I panicked a bit, thinking that we might have screwed up our second chance. "WHAT?! Did something change? I don't think we've made that many changes that could affect Yanagisawa."

Akari squeezed my hand and I calmed down, allowing Ritsu to speak again. "No, I don't think it is a result of anything we've done. What I detected was that there might be some off-shoot experiments related to Korosensei's in a different lab. I've detected similar data in a lab located near Paris, France. From the information exchanges detected between the lab and the outside world, I can deduce that they might be under Yanagisawa's wing. Now, usually I would've hacked into the systems and stolen all the information relative to it but I detected a problem, and that is the fact that the lab wing that is supposed to support said experiments possesses no cameras or other forms of electronic surveillance, nor have I found any encrypted information on their files relative to that experiment, which means that anything that has to do with it is physical, not allowing me to access it."

Akari spoke up, concerned. "That is a bit of a scary prospect. If Yanagisawa has other experiments running all over the world, it might cause bigger problems than expected. That lunatic does not know boundaries so if we do not manage to stop all his projects, one of them might go rogue and cause massive damage."

"Indeed, we need more information, we will need to investigate it physically. Hey Akari, weren't you looking for a destination to spend our vacations in? Because I guess, Paris might be a good one." I smiled cheekily.

"That does indeed sound like a good idea, but what about our friends? None of them is aware of my job as an actress, and vacations in France can cost quite a bit, how would we explain?"

"They don't need to know we went to France. Just your sister because we will need and adult to 'supervise' us. But speaking about our friends, that does give me a great idea. Karma is getting awfully suspicious, but we could redirect his suspicions by taking him with us and just revealing you are also Haruna Mase. We might be able to get him to think that was our big secret."

Ritsu gave her own opinion. "That might be a sound idea Nagisa, but be careful. Karma is far, far from stupid, and as such he will probably gain new suspicions. But for now that sounds like a good plan to stop is scrutiny for a bit."

I cheered. "So it's decided! France here we go!"

.

 _-(Park)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa & Karma(P.O.V.)-**

Nagisa called me last night, asking me to go to the park after lunch to ask me something. I had no idea of what he could want. Was he going to reveal something from his secrets? Was it just to hang out? Or was it something else? I kept wondering about it all day until the time to meet Nagisa came.

I was the first to arrive to the park. It was a sunny day, with a light breeze, it was comfortable to be outside so I didn't mind the wait. After 10 minutes I saw Nagisa's silhouette approaching. He smiled and waved at me, and by his hesitation I could tell that he was thinking about how he would tell me something. I decided to just start talking and go from there.

"So Nagisa, what did you want to ask me? It sounded pretty important."

Nagisa looked at me a bit startled because I decided to take the initiative, though he really shouldn't have been and spoke. "Well, me and Kaede are going with her sister to Paris during summer vacation and we thought about bringing a friend. As such we decided to ask you if you wanted to come."

That... was honestly not even close to what I was expecting. A trip to France? Not at all one of the possibilities I considered. Though it did raise some questions, as I saw both Nagisa's and Kaede's houses and neither looked the type to have money to spare to go on a trip to Europe, much less bring a friend. This might be interesting.

"I have nothing to do and my parents rarely come home, so it might be fun. I'll go with you, though I hope the french have nothing against some 'harmless' pranks."

I could see him shudder at what I said, though he looked relieved by my acceptance.

"That's good, the flight is in 5 days, prepare you bags and meet us at the airport at 6:00 AM to catch it."

"Will do. So how have you been with your little girlfriend?"

Nagisa looked really embarrassed though not as much as I expected. Ah, his reactions are becoming less and less fun.

After that we spoke a bit more while wandering in the park before Nagisa had to leave.

I really hope this vacations is more interesting that my last ones. It at least seems to be pilling up to be an interesting few weeks.

.

 _-(August 2nd - Arrival at the Hotel)-_

.

 _-(Nagisa & Karma's Room)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Karma-**

After we arrived at the hotel Akari's sister had to leave, and though she didn't tell us where, we suspect that Yanagisawa found out about our trip and sent her to do something at the lab. Damn sneaky worm.

We ended up having to transport all of our luggage to our rooms. Yukimura-sensei decided to pay for 2 rooms, one for em and Karma and one for her and Akari. I would have liked to stay with Akari but with these circumstances it was probably for the best. After our luggage was in place I started chatting with Karma waiting for Akari to be ready with her part of the plan. She had brought some dye remover so she was going to take a bath and remove the green dye she dyed her hair with and then come meet us, where we would explain the whole different identities thing.

I just hope she doesn't take too much longer, I don't know how much more I can stall.

.

 **-Nagisa, Karma(P.O.V.) & Akari-**

We had been in our room chatting for 30 minutes already and Kaede hand't come to our room yet. Nagisa was obvious stalling for something, though I had no idea what so I played along.

There were some things I found strange since meeting at the airport. Like the way Nagisa and Kaede were fidgety, or the fact that Kaede's sister didn't give me her family name when she introduced herself. Even stranger was the fact that I spotted said sister in Kunugigaoka going towards class 3-E's mountain. Was she a teacher there?

I was getting a bit bored when the door to our room opened. I had my back to the door so I had to turn around. And a black haired girl, lacking pigtails is not what I was expecting. While my mind tried to process what I was seeing, she closed the door and approached us.

"Hey Karma, I guess explanations are needed huh?"

I could see that her frame was identical to Kaede's and so was her voice so they were probably the same person... Unless she had another sister though that was unlikely.

"You guess? I'm pretty sure explanations are needed!"

She sat down next to us, a bit fidgety, and then spoke. "Well, the thing is... Kayano Kaede doesn't exist." All I could utter at that sentence was a barely intelligible 'huh?'.

"Kaede is a persona I created to hide my identity. My real name I Yukimura Akari, though most people know me by the alias Haruna Mase."

Haruna Mase... Why was that name so familiar... Wait, it couldn't be- "Haruna Mase?! The one from the dramas? The actress?"

She nodded. "Yup, the same. I didn't want to be recognized so I could have a normal school life so I took an alias and changed my appearance. It's amazing how a bit of hair dye and a different hair style can easily hide a person."

That actually made a lot of sense, life as an actress is probably very stressing with all the fans and paparazzi. I just couldn't get one question out of my head

"This does explain how you are able to afford a trip to Paris but why reveal all of this to me? I like it that you trust me enough to do this, but why?"

This time Nagisa was the one to speak. "Because you are our friend and we feel like we can trust you with a few of our secrets. As long as we've known you, you have always been trustworthy."

I couldn't help to catch the hidden meaning behind what he said, something I'm pretty sure he knew I would pick up on. He felt like he could trust me with secrets, as in plural. That would mean that they are considering sharing something else with me but the fact they haven't yet means that they are not quite sure if they should. I'll make sure they know that they can trust me. If there is one thing I refuse to do it is to betray my friends, no matter how much my reputation might be that of a troublemaker, I still value close friendships.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anybody, your secrets are safe with me."

They both smiled, genuine smiles and Kaede, err Akari, spoke. "That's great, we believe you. Thanks for keeping our secrets."

And with that a little secret conversation was finished between our words.

We stayed in mine and Nagisa's room until night fell, talking about Akari's life as an actress and more things that had to be kept away from me before because of her double identity, triple identity? Whatever, I'm just happy that they are trusting me more with this kind of things.

.

 _-(August 7th - 5 days after the reveal)-_

,

 **-General P.O.V. (Nagisa-centric)-**

These 5 days were a lot of fun. After revealing Akari's true identity to Karma a raincloud that we didn't even know had formed over our minds diminished in size. We didn't feel ready to tell him everything about us at the time but eventually we will, as we both feel he is a friend we can trust with this.

We used this time to visit the city, and it was amazing. I had been out of Japan a few times in my previous life but it never ceased to amaze me how different our culture were. We walked around the city, watching the people, visiting monuments, museums, eating the local specialties, everything a normal tourist does. And it was fun, very, very fun. I enjoyed myself in a way I hand't in a while, walking together with Akari and Karma by my sides. Indeed, what I enjoyed the most wasn't what I saw, it was the fact that I saw it alongside both the woman I love and my best friend. Few things can beat spending time with the ones closest to you.

Apart from acting like tourists, me and Akari managed to use the time when Karma wanted to stay on the hotel to scout the lab. It wasn't very hard to find with Ritsu's help, and the lab didn't seem as heavily defended as Yanagisawa's so it would probably be easy to infiltrate. And we would have to do so, because from the outside there wasn't much we could gather apart from some suspicious trucks coming in and out.

As such we decided to prepare for it, we gathered some of the equipment we had obtained through Ritsu and then tucked away in our bags. We had to do it with special wrapping because some things would not have escaped airport security. It included some special suits made for higher stealth and various forms of infiltration equipment like electronic lock-picks, tools to enter windows undetected, basic tools, communication equipment and many other little gadgets.

We were speaking with Ritsu about how we were going to do it.

.

 **Nagisa, Karma(P.O.V.), Akari & Ritsu-**

I was relaxing in my room, while Nagisa and Akari were doing who knows what in hers. I had decided to give them some privacy so they could spend some alone time with each other. But as a direct result of that I was getting bored, horribly **bored**.

An then I had an idea, I could play a prank on them! It would be a bit cruel to do it when they are alone, but still, it would amuse me.

I decided to go with a classic. I gathered some balloons I had stored for these purposes (a prankster must never leave his home without supplies!), filled then with water and then I quietly walked towards Akari's room.

As I approached the door, I noticed something weird. They were talking quietly but I could distinguish a third voice. The curiosity got the better of me so I walked silently to the door and eavesdropped a bit.

The first voice I heard was Nagisa's. "-gisawa's interference. Without being sure of it we can't rule out that whatever he is doing there might be harmful."

"The initial reports I was able to obtain show that whatever is being sone is most definitely related to Korosensei's experiments, and as such antimatter related. As we have found, anything to do with that can be quite dangerous." This voice I couldn't identify.

"So infiltration it is. This lab's security is much weaker than his main lab in Japan, so it shouldn't be that hard to do. We just have to be careful so we don't alarm the vermin and he ends up making our life more difficult." I could identify Akari's voice, though the way she spoke of whoever she called a vermin was full of vitriol.

"It will probably be a simple process. We just need you, Ritsu, to get us information about the staff working there and their schedules and movements. We will also need the blueprints of the building so we can navigate it, anything else we can do it our-"

At that moment one of the water balloons slipped from my grasp and fell on the floor, breaking open and making a loud splashing noise. It appears my luck just ran out...

I heard Nagisa's voice from the inside. "Karma?"

I had no other choice, I opened the door. Inside I saw Nagisa and Akari together and a phone which had the image of a purple headed girl on it. They saw the water balloons and I think they guessed what had happened. I waited for what would come next. Would they act hostile against me for hearing what I shouldn't have? Would they attack me? I was starting to panic until Nagisa spoke, with a calming smile.

"Well, I guess we have a lot to explain, don't we?"


	8. Chapter 7 - Half-truths and plans

_Hello! I hope you once again enjoy my new chapter. The first mission is almost here!_

 _As always, do review and I'll see you next weekend!_

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _Previously:_

 _"Well, I guess we have a lot to explain, don't we?"_

.

 **-Nagisa, Karma(P.O.V.), Akari & Ritsu-**

I just stood there, frozen. Despite Nagisa's smile I was still worried, I knew they were hiding something and by the way they acted I was absolutely sure they were dangerous. No, nothing like that was going to make me relax. I just waited while they whispered to eachother. They were probably discussing my fate. Would they get rid of me? My lips were dry, body paralyzed and my blood had ran cold. So many possibilities came to mind, and not one of them was pleasant.

After a bit of panicking they stopped whispering and turned to me and Nagisa spoke.

-At the same time Nagisa's P.O.V.-

Despite trying to get Karma to calm down, it seemed he was far too nervous for that. It hurt a bit that a friend of mine could be deathly afraid of me. But still, we had to decide what to do.

I turned to Akari and Ritsu and started whispering in order to come to an agreement about what we would say to Karma. "This is problematic. Not at all unexpected, especially because we had already considered bringing him into the fold, but still I think it would have been better if it had happened while we weren't in the middle of an operation. What do we tell him? The whole truth? Or do we omit parts of it?"

Akari was the one to speak after me. "I think we shouldn't tell him the whole story. Time travel to which we have absolutely no answers for is quite a bit unbelievable, so that should not be told. I suggest telling him about the experiments and their possible consequences. Telling him about the future might also change the way he will interact with Korosensei even more than whatever else we might tell him would, and I would rather not have that happen, after all Korosensei did change a lot about how Karma behaved. I think we should tell him about Yanagisawa's lab and the antimatter experiments specifically."

I thought that it was a good plan, but it left too many holes to be answered. "That is a good call, though it has too many problems. How do we explain that we discovered his experiments? How do we explain meeting Ritsu and finally, how do we explain our knowledge of assassination and infiltration techniques?

My doubts created a bit of silence for a bit, before Ritsu spoke up. "I think I might have an answer for that. It is a bit farfetched but it might work. We could cover those 3 problems using me. I suggest that we say that I was an AI that escaped containment and was content to watch the world but that, while reading random information, caught wind of some very dangerous experiments and decided that something had to be done about it. As I watched security footage I could have seen the way your sister behaved differently with Yanagisawa's experiment and as she was too compromised to do anything I chose you to help as you love your sister and would rather not see her hurt. You also decided that the two of us would be too few and recruited a boy you knew very well, Nagisa and you knew you could trust with your life to help. As I figured you would need experience to carry out operations, I took information out of the internet and used it to train you. I think that is the best that we can get for now."

Ritsu was right, the story was incredibly farfetched but for the lack of a better one, it would have to do. Besides, we could have made up a worse story.

With the decision made, I turned towards Karma and asked him to come over and sit on the bed with us.

He nervously shuffled towards, after closing the door as I told him of course, and sat down.

An awkward silence settled for a bit. Karma kept sneaking glances at Ritsu, obviously confused.

In order to break the silence I decided to introduce Ritsu. "Well, I think we should start by introducing the one person you don't know. Ritsu if you would."

"Hello, my name is Autonomously Thinking Fixed Artillery, or Ritsu for short. I am an AI that was originally created for warfare. What my creators did not account for was for me to gain sentience and escape. I have full cognitive capability, and as such I am capable of experiencing emotions and many other usually humans only feelings."

Karma looked, as it is obvious, extremely shocked. If his face was capable of it, I bet his jaw would have dropped to the floor. You could see from the look in his eyes that he was still trying to comprehend what the hell Ritsu had just said. After one or two minutes Karma managed to regain composure and after blushing a bit because of his reaction he simply nodded.

After that we proceeded to tell him the story we prepared. We told him of Ritsu's escape, the discovery of Yanagisawa's experiments and the predicted apocalyptic consequences for the planet, the way we all started this group and our mission, our training and finally our 'suspicion' that something big was going to happen in 2 years. During the whole story Karma just stood there dumbfounded. It was obvious that he found it to be completely unbelievable, but after we showed him the proof Ritsu gathered he started believing us. We had just finished showing him our proof when he asked us:

"So, what is your next plan?"

I decided that telling him that would do no harm. "We plan to infiltrate the lab in two days. We will gather as much information as possible about whatever they have in there and then see if we can somehow disrupt it without leaving too much evidence of our operation."

He seemed to still be thinking about what we told him so I added: "After all this you should probably go and rest a bit. You watch from the hotel, with Ritsu's help and see how we do things. If, after thinking about it, you want to join us just tell us and we will start your training."

He just nodded, still shellshocked with all the information we dumped on him and left towards our room with a mumbled 'Good Night'.

Akari looked at me. "Do you think he'll be ok?"

"Yeah, he is stronger than this. He is just a bit overwhelmed, you'll see him bouncing back tomorrow." I hope. All I could do was hope.

.

 **-Karma (P.O.V.)-**

I expected many things. The most extreme of my theories were that they were somehow trying to destroy some yakuza group, or take down some corrupt politicians. I never, ever would have expected them to be trying to stop an egomaniacal scientist from doing experiments that could endanger the entire planet with the help of a sentient AI. That was just... It sounded like something straight out of a movie! How do things like these even happen in real life? It's just so unreal...

I could tell that they were hiding something. At first I thought they had made the whole experiment story up but after checking all of the proof they gave me I was forced to accept it. Then I thought that the whole AI thing was the lie, but the speed she sent information and did things was just far too unreal. But I was sure there was a lie somewhere, or at least something they were not telling me. The story they told me had coherent parts, but some of them just sounded like pieces that were hastily glued together. At the very least I could tell that their objective was what they told me, but there was something hiding under it, like a secondary objective that I couldn't see.

Despite all that, after I settled down on my bed to think, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to help. To help my friends in this insane quest they gave themselves. That insane asshole could not keep doing these crazy experiments, he could destroy the entire world! That simply would not do. He must be stopped, and I'll be a part of the group who does it. Consequences be damned, he would not come out on top!

.

 _-(August 8th - 1 day before the operation)-_

.

 _-(Yukimura sisters' room)-_

.

 **-Nagisa, Karma(P.O.V.), Akari & Ritsu-**

With the decision I made last night I got of my bed and, determined went to Akari's room. Her sister had spent the night out, I suspect now, working in the lab and as such Nagisa had spent the night with Akari there. And thought my imagination would love to create many scenarios about what they did alone, I really doubt they did anything.

I knocked on the door and Nagisa opened it. I was surprised to see Nagisa already awake with Akari talking to Ritsu. He beckoned me to sit down next to them and I did as I was asked.

After sitting down I noticed that they were all looking at me expectantly. I took a breath and spoke. "I have decided to join you. If you're doing something this insane, then you need an expert on the insane."

I grinned and them and they smiled. I guess now it is us 4 against the evil maniac. This just sounds more and more like a movie

Nagisa, smiling widely, spoke. " I knew you wouldn't disappoint. Welcome aboard our crazy ride. I hope you enjoy it."

.

 **-Nagisa's P.O.V.-**

I knew we could count on Karma. He is a great friend of our for a reason. And now with one more member on our group we can do a lot more, especially because Karma specializes in troublemaking.

Deciding to address more serious matters, I started briefing Karma about out operation. "Now that you're here we can start discussing our mission. As you just became a member of our group you don't have the training necessary to directly participate so as I said yesterday, you will stay here using my tabled through which Ritsu will allow you to follow our progress. You will have access to the cameras and any info that Ritsu could get her hands on for the lab. If you find anything that you think would be useful that we might have missed, just talk to the tablet and we'll hear you." Taking a deep breath I continued. "The operation will start tomorrow at 10:00 PM. Most scientists have gone home by that hour and all that remains is one of two janitors and the night guards. Akari's sister is one of the few who stays the night there, assisting whoever is monitoring Yanagisawa's experiment, so we must be very careful not to be seen nor caught on tape. The alarms will be on so we will need to have Ritsu help out by disabling them. We can stay in the lab, at most until 3:00 AM. That will give us 5 hours to go in, get as much information as possible and get you. As we have no idea of what they are hiding or it's danger this will be a purely scouting mission. Though we might have to end up doing more than scouting if anything goes wrong. We have the guard shifts and usual movement patters mapped out, though do not expect them to remain always the same, guards are not robots, they are human and us such cannot be perfectly in line with the info we got. We leave the hotel 1 hour before the operation to prepare. Any questions?"

Seeing that no one wanted to ask anything I added: " Today me and Akari will be preparing the equipment necessary for tomorrow and making sure every detail of this operation is well studied. As our first real mission, we must not fail. As would be said in many movies: 'The future of the planet depends of our success.'. Tomorrow we take our first step towards stopping Yanagisawa's insanity."

I couldn't help but laugh a bit at how much I sounded like some action movie protagonist. We start building our future tomorrow, and I believe that we can succeed and by Karma's excited grin, Akari's wide smile and Ritsu's cheery expression, so did they.


	9. Chapter 8 - The infiltration begins

_Hello once again!_

 _Sorry for the late chapter but I was quite busy this weekend. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and don't forget to review!_

 _Also sorry for the cliffhanger but I thought it would be appropriate._

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _-(August 9th - Day of the operation)-_

.

 _-(Near the lab)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari, Karma & Ritsu-**

It was 9:45 PM when we arrived at the premises of the lab. We had woken up at 3:00 PM in order to get some extra rest and spent the rest of the day preparing for this. We filled our bags with lightweight equipment and sound muffling padding in order to be able to easily sneak around the facility. We had things that ranged from lock-picking equipment, alarm detection equipment and the sort to soporific darts in case of emergency. After that we took another look at our plan, double checking schedules, paths, escape routes, alarms, cameras and the like. After all that me and Akari left the hotel at 9:00 PM leaving Karma in the hotel to monitor our progress with Ritsu's help. This was our first operation, and as a very important one, especially because it might gives us insight into things we didn't know before from our past life.

I stood with Akari, crouched behind a small wall when Ritsu's voice came from the ear piece.

"The operation is almost starting. I am going to guide you towards the entry point, a small chute on the side of the building that is used for passing certain smaller deliveries into the building. It is quite a tight fit but with your size I'm pretty sure you'll be able to go through." I tried to ignore Karma's snickering at the comment about my size and continued listening to Ritsu. "Whoever mans this lab already expected possible intruders from this chute so there are a few surveillance cameras watching that point. There is also an alarm for unauthorized deposits. At 9:55 PM I will make the cameras' feed loop and I will disable the alarms. I can't do it for more than 10 minutes for fear of detection. You will have to make it to the chute undetected in that time and go through it. I think 10 minutes is plenty so you should be able to make it inside safely."

"Understood." Both me and Akari answered in unison. At least the odds of us making it inside were good.

And thus started the waiting game. We stood there, watching for 7 minutes and at 9:54 PM after a whispered 'Go!' we ran for the chute. It took us 2 minutes to traverse the space between the place we were at and the wall where the chute was located, so by that time we had 9 minutes remaining. As we looked at the chute we noted that Ritsu was right, were it anyone other than us he or she would have been stuck. I stood guard while Akari made her way in. The clock was ticking and it wasn't until I heard her 'ok' 3 minutes later that I went inside. Anyone claustrophobic would have had a panic attack inside that small space. It was an uncomfortable crawl towards the inside but I made it in. I looked around and I saw Akari near the door of what looked to be a storage room, as it was filled with crates and some scattered equipment. It also happened to be a bit dusty, something which my nose did not appreciate as I almost sneezed.

I decided to take the initiative and start the actual infiltration. "We're in, we have memorized the building's layout, at least what we had under surveillance but we will still need you to watch out for any dangers."

"This room is connected to a secondary hallway in which there are 3 cameras, one pointed directly at the door where you'll have to go through, one pointed outwards towards the hallway and one that watches a door that leads to a laboratory room. There is also a motion sensor which is active at night and will notify all guards if triggered, unless you obtain a special card the the guards carry around to go through without triggering the alarm. I can neutralize 3 of those measures without raising suspicion, I think whoever made this security system was far more careless with the inside security measures than the outside ones. Though if I still had all the enhancements I had before I 'escaped', I might have been able to turn it all off without a problem." With the way she spoke the word 'escaped' me and Akari deduced that she was speaking about the enhancements that she was able to do to her program in our past life, she probably wasn't able to redo them all yet without access to her original shell. It wouldn't do for Karma to know something we weren't ready to reveal. "The motion sensor is imperative to disable as you two don't have the cards so you will have to choose 2 of the three cameras."

I thought a bit about our choices, though in the end it was easy to see what would have to be done. "Loop the one pointed towards the door and the one that watches the hallway first. After we make it out of the first camera's range switch to the one that oversees the lab. Are there any cameras inside the lab room?"

Akari was the one to answer this question. "There is one that I remember seeing on the blueprints though it isn't directly watching the door so Ritsu should the able to switch the hallway's camera to that one."

"Ok, that's our action plan, let's do this!"

Both of us waited until Ritsu confirmed the deactivation of the security measures to leave the room. We made walked through the hallway, always alert in case of any unexpected disturbance. We waited until Ritsu switched the cameras and walked into the laboratory room, where once again the cameras were changed. Only then did we start looking around the lab, confident that both Karma and Ritsu would watch out for any unpleasant surprises.

The room we found ourselves in wasn't much, probably just a normal lab room where most of the normal experiments were made. Just a few cabinets with experiment documentation, a few filled with various chemicals we couldn't identify neither by look nor by name, that would have been Okuda's job, and a a bunch of lab equipment. We decided to scour the room for anything even remotely interesting, though we found barely anything, just a few files on antimatter research on small animals which could be useful to look at later, files which we had Ritsu copy through a small scanning device we brought with us. I really wonder how Ritsu managed to get us so many neat gadgets...

After looking around a bit more and deeming this room worthless we decided to leave, by having Ritsu do an inverse camera switch we managed to leave the medium-sized room and walked to the end of the hallway. As we got there we waited for Ritsu's next instructions, though I was surprised to hear Karma's voice.

"Ritsu thinks I should get a bit more experience with this so she is letting me do the survey of the area and the threat assessment as this is a low danger zone. So this hallway is a main one, it leads to various other secondary hallways as well as a few rooms, some of which more important lab rooms. There are quite a lot more cameras in here which will make it a lot more difficult to choose which to loop and there is also one guard that usually goes through this hallway, though right now he is nowhere near you. He is occupied speaking to another guard inside one of the rooms that is connected to a secondary hallway so you should be safe for now, though be on guard for anything options we have right now are to go directly to one of the main labs and walk through the hallway towards one of the staff dressing rooms, any other rooms from what I can see in the cameras are completely unimportant. I cannot see any possible paths towards our main objective because of the cameras so you'll have to think of something to do."

That was discouraging. If we couldn't make it to our main objective what the hell did we come here for?! Akari though seemed to have an idea.

"Karma, would we be able to pass if we could disable 3 of the cameras at a time?"

"Yes, though unless you plan to knock out the two guards that I talked about before I don't see ho- OOOOOHH, I think I know where you're going with this."

"Good, then our next destination are the dressing rooms. From there we might be able to get the cards we need to pass."

Akari's plan was indeed solid. As such we carefully proceeded towards the dressing rooms making sure to avoid triggering any alarms.

When we got there we noticed that there were no cameras, probably so as to protect the staff's privacy. With that weight off our shoulders we started using our lock-picking equipment to open the various lockers and look for any forgotten staff cards. In the end we found 5 cards, though we only kept 4 so as to have a spare one for each and left the room. These cards would make our job much easier.

Having the capability to loop 3 cameras opened a few new possibilities, we could either go to the already mentioned lab room, towards our main objective or towards the archive/data centre.

After a bit of discussing our possibilities and the fact that we had already scoured a lab before with little to no gains, we decided to head towards the archive so as to obtain any information that might be useful. Thought Ritsu already searched the digital part of the archive, she had no way of accessing the physical which we were going to raid.

An hour and a half had already passed with everything we had done so we still had 3 and a half hours left until we had to leave. We moved towards the archive with mostly no problems. There was a minute of two where we had almost been caught so we had to hide in a storage closet and wait for the guard to pass through. Karma really needed to pay more attention...

We got to the archive and it was an amazing sight. Rows and rows of secure cabinets filed with files about this and that experiment, next to a row of servers to hold all the information produced by the lab. We stood there amazed for a bit before Karma snapped us out of our awkward gazing by coughing a bit. We quickly started searching through some of the files. At least they were labelled by experiment and in alphabetical order, by using the files Ritsu had gathered before we knew which experiments were antimatter related and were able to make a beeline towards them and gather any info that we thought could be useful later. After a lot, and by a lot I mean a **LOT** , of file scanning we were finally finished with the archive room and decided to head to the only area that we had any interest in now, which just so happened to be our objective, the laboratory wing in which we could not access any of the surveillance.

We made our way towards the door that separated the two parts of the lab and as we neared it Ritsu decided to warn us about the dangers we could face.

"The are in which you're about to infiltrate is completely foreign to us. I suspect their surveillance equipment is connected to a separate network so you must be careful not to trip any alarms of be seen by any cameras as I won't be able to warn you. The outfits you're using should disguise your most obvious features but you must not be careless. That is also the area where you sister is Akari, be **very** careful. I might be able to help you if you can use the wireless connector I gave you, just find a way to plug it into the separate system and I should be able to gather any information stored there.

With that warning issued we opened the door and entered.

The first word that came into my mind when I looked at what was beyond us was white. It was extremely white. No seriously, it was far more white than any other wing of the laboratory. It was very clean too. We could see that the corridor we were in branched off into various rooms, which were conveniently labelled as to their purpose. The only cameras I could see were in a different than before, not in the fact that they were better but that they moved. There were less of them and with the movement, if we made the right choices of where to step we could avoid the field of view and sneak past the cameras. There were no obvious other alarms, though we must be careful anyways.

We had two objectives right now, to find a way to plug Ritsu in and to investigate whatever was in here and with the fact that we didn't need to stick together in order to avoid the cameras we decided to split up. Akari would go and find the place to connect Ritsu while I would search for the experiment. We went in two opposite directions of the hallway with the intention of completing our objectives.

.

 **-Akari's P.O.V.-**

I was a bit worried about leaving Nagisa to go investigate alone but in order to do this as efficiently as possible we needed to separate. I bolted towards the server room, making sure to avoid any of the cameras. It was discomforting not having Ritsu's help while doing this. One false step and we would be screwed. There was simply no way to explain what two kids were doing in a private lab in an extremely restricted wing, and with the fact that my sister was working here could drag her down with us. That is one thing I refuse to let happen.

I managed to get to the room while, I think, doing a good job of avoiding the cameras and any possible guards. There was a smaller server inside and I got to work searching for an input to connect the device in. It did take me a while as I was unfamiliar with the room's layout and the way the device even worked but I eventually managed to plug Ritsu into the system.

"Ok Ritsu, now's your turn connect to the system and do your magic."

"Thanks, I'll start hacking now. It should be pretty easy to do, the system isn't that very secure as they don't appear to have expected any physical attacks. Let's see... unlocking the information, disabling alarms and finally accessing the cameras, ok I think we're go- Oh, this is not good."

This did not bode well. "Ritsu what's happening? Were we detected? Is Nagisa ok?" For a moment I thought I could hear Karma vomiting in the background but I put it down to my imagination.

"I- Uh, you should really go after Nagisa. Don't worry, you were not detected but I think you should go before something worse happens, the security measures here are pretty basic so I put all cameras on a loop, you should be able to go directly towards Nagisa with no problems, I'll warn you if there are any guards."

Hearing that something might be wrong with Nagisa instantly put me on edge. With panic growing in my mind I bolted out of the server room towards the room where they kept the main experiment, though making sure not to alarm anyone. As I got there I could hear scratching and screaming and I became really terrified of whatever might be happening to Nagisa, so I ran with speed that I didn't think I was capable off.

When I got to the room's door I opened it and the first thin I noticed was Nagisa. He was as pale as a sheet, eyes wide and trembling. You could hear him hyperventilate by how loud he was but I could also hear the screaming and scratching coming from wherever Nagisa was looking at.

I slowly turned towards the origin of the sounds and what I saw horrified me.


	10. Chapter 9 - New revelations and success

_Hello once again dear readers!_

 _This is the biggest chapter I've written so I really hope you like it._

 _This chapter was very interesting to write and many horrible discoveries are made._

 _Anyways, see you next week!_

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _Previously:_

 _I slowly turned towards the origin of the sounds and what I saw horrified me._

.

 _-(A few minutes before)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.)-**

After separating from Akari I carefully made my way through the corridor, avoiding the cameras as best as I could in order to get to the experiment chamber. It was a slow and tense walk, after all without Ritsu's help guards could pop out at any time, or even worse, Akari's sister. That is a can of worms I would rather not open, at least not now.

I arrived at the door. It was electronically locked, though that wouldn't be that much of a problem because of our equipment. Ritsu made sure we always had the best tools available for our missions. It took a few seconds for the device to unlock the door, a few **horrendously** nerve-wracking seconds, but just a little time nonetheless. I would have taken far longer trying to do it manually, if I managed to do it at all. I opened the door slowly and carefully in case there was anyone on the inside watching for intruders, but I felt incredibly relieved when I detected no signs of anyone's presence inside, or at least no one that was making any move towards me. I should have not felt relieved, as it just made what came next hit even harder.

It took a bit for my brain to process the scene I was greeted by, not only because it was unbelievable but also because of the dim lighting of the room. It was, in one word, horrifying. The first thing I could notice was the blood (despite that the trained assassin in the back of my mind still noticed the utter lack of surveillance of any kind, go figure), though it appeared to be dried already and it's color dulled, thus it had not been recently spilled. If that was not enough to put me on edge, the next few things ensured that I would not stay unaffected. There were what seemed like old rotting corpses laying around. Most of them were wearing white lab coats but some of them had what looked like security outfits and others patient gowns, like the ones from hospitals. I was becoming increasingly distressed and the putrid stench that emanated from the room did not help. The lack of smell on the outside would suggest an insulated room, was what my subconscious curiously noted. My mind was racing, trying to figure out what the hell had happened there. Apart from the things noted before there was also what looked like an operating table, which was stained in blood and gore and a lot of lab equipment. The last thing I noticed was that the part of the room where I was was separated from the horror movie-like scene by a transparent wall of some kind, which I doubted was glass, that had some holes whose purpose I suppose was the transfer of objects to and from the inside. Karma who was watching through the camera I had strapped to my head sounded ready to pass out and had run to the bathroom to dump whatever meals he had before down the toilet. Not even Ritsu was unaffected as she became rather silent when I entered the room.

Still shellshocked by the scene and barely holding inside my dinner I nervously approached the barrier. As I made my way closer and closer towards it a foreboding feeling started to make itself known in my head. Something was not right and It would be bad, **very** bad. I started to expect some jumpscare like those from the horror movies but it didn't stop me from seizing up when it happened. From one moment to the other a figure collided against the wall. It looked terrible. If I had to describe it, I would have to say that it was a cross between a normal person and Koro-sensei, just extremely botched up. Some of it's limbs where ripped apart and had badly connected tentacles coming out of what little remained of them. It's face was mess, as the eyes mouth, nose, everything was horribly displaced. The top of it's head had some tentacles coming out of it but they looked wounded and half melted. The chest cavity had one enormous hole in it through which you could see tentacles wriggling on the inside. Despite all that, it's greatly predominant color was Korosensei's yellow and it's bloodstained mouth had the smiled he many times wore. For a moment I seized up thinking it was actually Korosensei but the similarities ended there though as the various features were different from his, such as a slightly bigger nose, smaller eyes and different body size among others. The creature wore a torn, blood and gore stained hospital gown and much of it's body had splotches of dried blood on it. Just seeing the figure made me want to puke. It's inaction, despite the erratically moving tentacles made me hope it was dead, after all, how do you survive a hole that massive being punctured into your chest. But all my hopes were for naught.

The creature suddenly, as if triggered by something, started screaming with a very warped voice and scratching at the walls. It's wails reverberated throughout the entire room and they proved to be extremely contradictory, probably because his psyche was completely torn apart. It went from variations of: **"KILL ME. KILL ME. KILL ME. END ME. I DON'T WANT TO EXIST ANYMORE."** ; to various forms of: **"I WILL KILL YOU. TEAR YOU APART. YOU WILL SUFFER FOR DOING THIS TO ME."**

My mind quickly started locking up. It latched on the few similarities that this being shared with Koro-sensei and my nightmares came back. Everything I hoped to have left behind in my past life came rushing into my mind, causing me pain and suffering that I had struggled to forget. The world around me disappeared, everything but the screams and the endless scratching faded into black and the demonic Korosensei from my nightmares substitutes it. It's deranged laughter and bloody figure, coupled with the screams made me feel like a terrified child again, whose only desire was to run, run, run until nothing could catch me. But despite that desire I was rooted to the spot, unable to do anything but witness the terror my mind forced on me. Soon I became incapable of most rational thought and it felt like I was drowning in my fear, incapable of escape.

.

 **-Nagisa, Akari(P.O.V.) & Ritsu-**

The scene in front of me was nothing that I expected in reality. Sure, in horror movies we got a lot of things like this, but in real life? Never. And that was what made it the more nauseating. The blood and gore scattered around, the corpses just left there to rot and last but most definitely not least, the terrifying creature that was wailing and desperately trying to break the transparent wall. My mind was about to lock up due to fear but Ritsu managed to keep me from suffering the same fate as Nagisa. "Akari, focus! Nagisa is vulnerable so you need to help him and if you become unresponsive too you will both be in danger!"

Ritsu's reminder about Nagisa's condition was all I needed to snap out of it. I ran towards Nagisa and started to shake him and talk to him. "Nagisa? Hey Nagisa! Are you okay? Come on, answer!" He was completely unresponsive and that caused a certain fear to take root in my heart. I slowly turned his face towards me and looked him in the eyes. I didn't want to believe it but the proof was right in front of me. His eyes were filled with a kind of terror, sorrow and guilt that I hadn't seen since our past life, since his depressive spiral. This could not be happening, not again. I simply could not lose him again, I couldn't bear to lose him without losing my mind. Filled with a new determination I embraced him and started whispering what I felt into his ears in the form of comforting lines. I would not lose him again, not now, not **ever**. I love Shiota Nagisa and nothing was going to take him away again!

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari-**

The darkness and cold surrounded me. Korosensei's demonic visage was the only thing that stood out. Fear and grief was all I felt. My thought were muddled and even the most basic things were like trying to swim upstream in a river of dense sludge. And I was drowning. Not in a literal way, but I was drowning in my darkness. How long had it been since I was like this? I couldn't find the answer in this state. How foolish I was... To think that I could escape from what I did by using this second chance. To think I even deserved this opportunity. No. Akari and Ritsu were probably the targets of whoever did this, I was just dragged along by mistake, much to the chagrin of whatever being is responsible for the violation of time and space. I don't deserve any of this. Akari is deluded, to be able to keep loving someone like me. She probably just hasn't noticed the monster that I am. She will notice in time and then kill me. Justice will be served for I do not deserve anything. It was all a foolish mistake.

I kept spiralling back into the darkness that used to cover my mind day and night when I heard it. At first it was faint, like the light at the end of a tunnel, but it grew and grew until I could understand what was being said. _"-kay. Na-sa it- -kay. You don- need to suf-r through this again. I am here with you. I won't leave your side. Ever."_

The voice was familiar but it took me a while to identify it. It was... Akari's! But how is she here? Why do I suddenly feel warm? What is happening? What about my punishment?

Unaware or unfazed by my questions the voice continued, my surroundings becoming slightly brighter and warmer with every word. _"Please Nagisa, come back to me. I can't lose you again, the first time was terrifying enough. Please don't make me go through it again. Remember what I said the day we reunited. Remember everything I said the various times we were together. Please, don't leave me, I love you too much to lose you."_

And I remembered. Every time she comforted me, all the times she told me to be strong and that she was there to help me and she would stay with me, both in the good and the bad times. The various times she reassured me that all would be well despite my insecurity. Korosensei vanished, the cold turned to warmth, the darkness to light, and though some treacherous thoughts still lingered, my mind felt far lighter than before.

I started to return to reality. I became aware of my surroundings and of Akari's arms embracing me. Of her soft voice whispering in my ear and I smiled. Though a bit of a strained smile because of the situation around us but nonetheless a smile. I closed my eyes and embraced her back, reassuring her that I was now ok. "It's ok Akari, I'm back. I won't leave you again. I love you too so don't worry, it's alright."

I opened my eyes and looked at her. She had stopped whispering and was looking at me with blatant relief in her eyes. I was such an idiot, to worry her and make her suffer like that.

The creature was still lashing out against the barrier but it didn't affect me past the obvious horrifying vision. No more demon Korosensei, no more darkness or cold. Just this creepy room and Akari.

.

- **Nagisa, Akari(P.O.V.) & Ritsu-**

I looked at Nagisa, while feeling an immense relief and happiness that he was back. He was not fully recuperated as he was still a but pale and lightly shaking but it was miles better than before.

We stayed embraced until Ritsu's voice interrupted us. "Sorry to cut your moment short but the screams have attracted a few guards and your sister is becoming alarmed. Though by her expression, she had absolutely no idea of what is going on. She was probably delegated to paperwork duty. I suggest you leave before more problems arise"

Deciding to take Ritsu's advice we bolted out of the room and made our way out. It was far more difficult to make our escape than it was to infiltrate because now the guards were aware that someone was there. Having still only the access to 3 cameras on the main lab area made our job far more difficult. We had to sneak around the rooms, avoid alert guards, avoid cameras and any other surveillance devices and go towards the storage room we had first ended up in. We had quite a few close calls, either by guards who almost found us or by almost wandering into an active camera's field of view. It was far more nerve-wracking than before but our skills were well trained so we were able to do it.

We made it to the room with quite a bit of time left to escape. With half an hour spent on the archive investigating, more or less 45 minutes on the separate lab wing and one hour and 10 minutes spent on our escape we still had about 1 hour and 5 minutes give or take to leave.

We made our way through the chute just like when we entered and ran from the building, hoping to not be spotted by any guards outside. Luckily we made it out safely with nothing but our sanity damaged. We got back to the hotel by 2:47 AM and immediately went to Akari's room.

.

 _-(Yukimura sisters' room)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa, Akari(P.O.V.), Karma & Ritsu-**

When we arrived at the hotel room we found a very pale Karma laying on the bed. It was obvious that he had seen everything. We sat down on the bed and he lifted himself up to sit too.

Silence permeated the room until Karma, after regaining his bearings and forcibly stopping himself from trembling, broke it. "I had already decided that I was going to help you but this was the final nail in the coffin. That bastard needs to die. Atrocities like that cannot be allowed to exist so I will support you all the way in taking down that monster."

We were surprised by his reaction but at the same time happy. Karma is proving himself time and time again to be a reliable ally and friend.

Nagisa spoke up. "Thanks for the support Karma, we'll definitely need it. The situation is much worse than what we envisioned so it will require a lot more investigation and care. Yanagisawa Kotaro will fall, of that I have no doubt. We will make sure of it."

Happy at seeing Nagisa so confident I smiled. It was good to see him like this and not full of fear. "Well, this has been a very exhausting day, both physically and psychologically so it is better for us to rest for now. You guys go back to your rooms so we can all get a much needed night of sleep."

Nagisa, agreeing with me got up and started walking towards the door with Karma right behind him. "Indeed, rest is the most welcome thing right now. Good night Akari."

.

 _-(3 hours later)-_

 _._

 **-Aguri(P.O.V.)-**

As I got to my hotel room I could only smile at seeing my little sister sleeping. She is one of my dearest people. A list of people that the funny guy from the lab is making his way into.

But today something else was puzzling me. While I was organizing some files I suddenly started hearing a lot of screaming but when I was making my way out of the room where I was to investigate one of the guards told me to stay put as they would see what was happening.

A few minutes after the screaming stopped and the guards told me that someone, probably from a rival company, had entered the lab unauthorized and tripped an alarm or something like that. The story sounds a bit farfetched but there was not a lot I could do as I was not able to see what happened.

The screams though always made their way back into my thoughts. I wonder what really happened...

.

 _-(Yanagisawa's research facility)-_

 _._

 **-Yanagisawa(P.O.V.)-**

I was contacted in the middle of the night by one of my subordinates. He reported to me that someone had infiltrated Paris's research facility and had seen Subject 00. Such a failure, but science was made by correcting the failures in order to perfect the method so sacrifices must be made.

None of the cameras showed any sign of the infiltrators and the only proof that they even were there was the fact that Subject 00's room was opened and a small device found in the server room, though it had completely fried itself, making it impossible to retrieve information from there. The intruder or intruders were highly skilled professionals as there is no way an amateur would have escaped detection. If I had to guess it was probably the same ones responsible for the security breach some months ago.

Whoever this group is they are good. I must be careful, Subject 09 is was showing a lot of progress and it would be a catastrophe if outside interference made it fail. I must reinforce my security but alas, this at least makes the experiment more interesting. Let's see how far they can get.


	11. Chapter 10 - Aftermath and return

_Hello! Here is the new chapter._

 _Once again, sorry for not posting yesterday but between studying for my exams (My first one is this friday **D:** ), and spending time with friends/family, I had no time to finish the chapter. Today I had the time so I finished it and it is now here for your enjoyment._

 _I hope you like it!_

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _-(August 14th - 5 days later)-_

.

 _-(Yukimura sisters' room)-_

.

 **-Nagisa, Akari, Karma(P.O.V.) & Ritsu-**

Five days had passed since the infiltration. We didn't have much time to talk about what happened as Akari's sister had gotten these days off (probably because of what we did) and so we spent a lot of time as a group going around the city and relaxing a bit. I actually think this was a blessing as after what we went through and what we saw some R&R was much needed and Nagisa looked like he needed to spend some time in company of friends as I awoke to his screams in the middle of the night a few times, though spending some time with Akari seemed to somewhat 'heal' him. That... thing we saw was terrifying. At the beginning I thought that they were over-exaggerating what was going on in those labs but now I have no choice but to believe. That creature was something you would expect to jumpscare you in an horror movie or game, it is something that one **NEVER** , expects to see in real life. The moment I laid my eyes on it and the scenery around it, even if through a camera, I felt terribly nauseous. I can't imagine what Nagisa and Akari went through, the stench that must have permeated that room would probably make me vomit by itself. That is not something that I would have wanted to see again, but alas I must prepare myself for I might not be that lucky.

Akari's sister had just gotten a call and rushed out of the hotel, telling us she would not spend this night on the hotel so we decided to get together and discuss the fruits of our investigation. After all this time Ritsu should have been able to finish analyzing everything Nagisa and Akari extracted from the servers. We once again sat down on Akari's bed and awaited Ritsu's analysis.

"I have read every file you obtained from the lab. From everything you got, the only files of any interest are the ones from the isolated servers located inside the special area of the lab, all the others are either completely unrelated or things that I could have accessed myself. Though there was some information on the physical files you scanned that has some information on the beginnings of the research into the antimatter stabilization formula. I'll try to have some contracted lab complete that research as backup. Now onto the important information." Ritsu paused for a moment as if to take a breath before speaking again. "What you got from the isolated servers is truly worrying. The creature you saw was labeled Subject 00. He was considered a failure because of the loss of most mental faculties and the rampaging tendencies. From what I can gather the antimatter did not react correctly with his brain causing him to be overtaken by bloodlust and the desire to kill, which ended with the massacre of all scientists and guards and other awaiting test subjects in the isolation room and the horrible disfiguration you saw. Luckily he was already contained in a strong room and his power is very limited so he was simply locked away for further experiments. Most people that work in there are unaware of the true purpose of that room, only the head scientist, his two most trusted helpers and a few heavily trained guards know of it as most of the people related to that experiment died in the massacre and Yanagisawa apparently bribed a few high ranking people and blackmailed a few more into labeling their deaths as a major lab accident and got the investigation that was supposed to be done into the case to be stopped. Yanagisawa is far more inhumane than any of us thought."

Nagisa spoke up. "The extent of his experiments... he is not even human anymore, he is simply a monster. You said that the creature was labeled as Subject 00, do the files have any info on what the subject at Yanagisawa's main lab is labeled as?"

"I was just getting there. The subject you referred is labeled as Subject 09. As he appears to be still in the initial phases of testing he is probably the most recent one. This means that we have 8 previous subjects that we know nothing about. The locations of where they are currently at and their status are in the files but nothing more. According to them Subject 01, Subject 04, Subject 06 and Subject 07 have been killed and their remains disposed off as all their research potential had been used up. Subject 03 has been killed but his remains are stored in a lab located in a lab somewhere on the Australian desert for further research. Subject 02, Subject 05 and Subject 08 are still alive but isolated in labs located in the Rocky Mountains, Siberia and a private island somewhere on the Pacific Ocean respectively. If we are to infiltrate these labs we must be much more cautious than before. I suspect Subject 00 is only here because Yanagisawa had no idea of the potential of his research and when the subject went berserk he could not move it somewhere else. The locations of these other labs are far more isolated and more difficult to approach. With our current resources we have no way of getting into the labs in Siberia and the island. We must get all the information possible before the deadline while still dealing with school and our friends. This will be very hard to do so in the end we might have to abandon some labs."

"That deadline is the event you suspect will happen in roughly two years right?"

"Correct. We suspect something will happen with Subject 09 whose lab is close to us so we must be prepared until then."

Akari and Nagisa looked worried about this new information. Frankly even I am worried. Even with the insane resources Ritsu appears to have access to, infiltrating those labs would be ridiculously difficult. If we are to do it we will need all the luck in the world to pull it off successfully.

After a bit of silence Nagisa decided to close our meeting. "This new information is indeed worrying so we will need to start making new plans in order to deal with these unexpected developments. But it would be better for us to deal with that when we get back to Japan. Right now we should just spend the last few days here relaxing and having fun, nothing good will come out of overworking ourselves. We only have 7 more days here so let's enjoy them as much as possible. This was after all, as we told your sister, a vacation trip."

Nagisa said the last part in a happier tone which dissolved the somber mood that had settled in and prompted us to cheer. Despite all the horrible things we saw we must not let them get us down. For now we will simply behave as the kids we are and have fun!

.

 _-(August 21st - Day of departure)-_

.

 _-(Airport)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari, Aguri & Karma-**

We spent the past few days just having fun around the city, doing what any tourist would do and, as an extra, teaching Karma the basics of infiltration and assassination. He looked at us oddly when we mentioned assassination but we justified it by telling him that assassins were always stealthy so it would help in his skills. Nothing much happened apart from Yukimura-sensei coming back 2 days ago. After that we all spent some time together before the time came to go back home.

We had just gotten to the airport and were awaiting our flight when Yukimura-sensei decided to ask us about our stay in Paris.

"Did you have fun? I know I spent quite a bit of time away but you still went around the city."

Akari happily answered. "We did! There were a lot of fun and interesting places to visit around here and so many things to see and do. Paris is so different from Japan!"

I added my 2 cents to the conversation"We visited the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre museum, the Arc of Triumph and various other places. It was really fun to come here. We need to do things like this again!"

Karma just smiled happily as to indicate that he also had a good time.

"Well I'm glad you guys enjoyed this trip." She then mumbled something she thought none of us heard. "At least it wasn't as stressing to them as it was to me."

Oh, if only she knew...

.

 _-(Park in their Hometown)-_

.

- **Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari, Karma & Ritsu-**

We had gotten back to our city and decided to go to the park to talk a bit before going back to our homes.

"The summer break is almost over and soon we will have to go back to school. Not much more can be done this break except a bit of planning and research on all the information we got for anything relevant. Apart from that we should just enjoy the rest of the break, spend time with our friends and prepare ourselves for the next term. I still haven't finished my summer homework..."

"Yeah, neither have I. I really don't want to do it, despite how easy it is. And I'll have to get used to being called Kayano Kaede again. I'll need to paint my hair green again. Meh, just another thing to add to my to-do list."

"I'll just find Rio and pull some pranks around the place and mess with people. At least that'll keep me entertained until the next operation."

I decided to admonish Karma a bit. "Remember not to harm too many people. Also we will be training you from now on so we will set up a daily schedule in order to improve you abilities. Are you free every afternoon from about 3:00 PM to 7:30 PM, with some free days to hang out with people?"

"Yup. I think I can abide by that. It'll be fun to learn how to do what you guys can do. It looked pretty cool from the camera feed that me and Ritsu intercepted."

"Then prepare yourself because we will train you to exhaustion. You have less time to prepare than we had so it will have to be a bit more intensive." A Karma-like grin threatened to split my face in half.

Karma paled a bit at seeing me grin. "Uh, can I quit now?"

My grin widened. "Nope."

Akari and I just laughed at his fearful expression. These would be some fun days. Very fun indeed.

.

 _-(Unknown)-_

.

 **-Ritsu(P.O.V.)-**

I spent a lot of time after the operation reflecting about what happened. After all, it was almost a disaster! My friends could have died and I wouldn't have been able to do anything. Absolutely **NOTHING**. Acknowledging that made me feel useless. What good was I if I couldn't protect those I care about?! Not having access to the physical world makes this very frustrating.

There must be something I could do! I wouldn't be able to bear losing my friends. They accepted me despite being an AI and I couldn't be more grateful for that fact so I need to pay them back and keep them safe.

Actually, thinking about it, there is something that I can do. This will be a long term project but if it helps them then it will be worth it. Just you wait Nagisa, Akari, Karma and all others who still don't know me. I will protect you all!


	12. Chapter 11 - Rotten dinner and new term

_Hello! I'm sorry for not posting this yesterday but I had no motivation and trying to write without motivation is like trying to break a brick wall with you head. Awful and ineffective._

 _So here we are again! A new chapter for you enjoyment. I hope you like it despite not having a lot of action. The story is a bit slow right now but there are parts where it will pick up the pace._

 _Until the next weekend!_

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _-(During the 20 days after the return)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.)-**

The few weeks between our return and the start of the new school term were very busy, though not nearly as stressing as what we went through.

Akari and I spent a lot of time getting Karma up to shape. The training regime we imposed on him consisted on a more intensive version of the one we went through with Karasuma-sensei: knife and basic weapon handling, stealth, physical conditioning, sparring, free-running, everything we learned in the past timeline. It was kinda funny seeing Karma struggle while remembering who he used to be.

I also spent a lot of alone time with Akari. She is the rock that keeps me anchored to reality. I don't like to admit it but that episode made my depression resurface and I haven't been able to get back completely to how I was before. The nightmares still happen sometimes, and the episodes of self-hatred and grief have assaulted me a few times since then. Though not nearly as much as in the past, err future, whatever. Despite that Akari makes sure that I know how much she cares for me. I still feel a bit undeserving but also very thankful for her support, after all without her I doubt I would have remained even remotely sane. She really is like an angel that has come from the heavens to protect me.

Personal problems aside, I've spent some time with my friends. I made sure Itona wasn't lonely, spent time playing baseball with Sugino, played a few games with Kanzaki, and just hung out as a group with a few other assassination classroom future friends. Nothing relevant happened apart from Itona expressing his desire to enter Kunugigaoka the next school year. I guess he wants to meet other people, which is quite a good sign.

Dealing with my mother was still... hard. Remembering who she became and seeing her now makes my chest constrict. She still has the desire for a daughter and I end up suffering the consequences, the only thing keeping me sane is the hope that the situation will improve later on as it did before. I really hope she is capable of finding her happiness again.

I spent a bit of time watching Yanagisawa's lab and noticed something interesting. The number security staff had pretty much doubled, probably due to our infiltration of Paris's lab. This will make our end goal harder so we will have to plan for any future security increases. I had Ritsu scan the building for digital security and she found that apart from having more cameras and other measures, the system was also harder to access which will make it far harder to actually save Yukimura-sensei.

During these days there was only one event that left me with a vile taste in my mouth, though I'd rather not talk about it...

.

 **-Akari/Kaede(P.O.V.)-**

Not a lot of interesting stuff had happened during these few days.

Apart from thoroughly enjoying the tortu- training we submitted Karma to, nothing much happened.

I got a small job for a drama, just something to fund me bit. I also spent time with a few friends like Okuda, Rio and some of the guys and girls of our time in class 3-E, just playing a bit and going to the movies, the park, just regular things. It's a nice change of pace in order to relax after our discoveries. It was also great to spend time with my sister, she being alive still feels like a dream and I will make sure that this dream stays real and does not slip through my fingers.

Speaking about the operation, I had to do some damage control on Nagisa. It just feels wrong to see him looking so vulnerable, looking like he is one step from falling into the abyss. I had to make sure he knew just how much I loved him. I will never lose him again so I will support him through any problem that might arise, nothing he says or does will be able to make me go away! I can see it in his eyes that he still thinks negatively of himself but I'll make it so that he once again sees his own worth, no matter how far I have to go in order to do it.

In these weeks that were supposed to be fully used for relaxation there was a little dinner that left me disgusted. I really hope it never happens again...

.

 **-Karma(P.O.V.)-**

There was one word I would use to define these days: pain. Oh the pain. Nagisa and Akari are evil slave-drivers! And the people have the gall to call me a demon. Those two made me spend hours and hours of painful training and they laughed. Laughed! I could see them smile, snicker and giggle whenever I fell from exhaustion. They are evil, the root of all evil! And I could have sworn I saw a gigantic snake when I complained to Nagisa about not wanting to do it anymore. What kind of monsters are they?! At first I made sure to take revenge on them by pranking them with Rio, but either my pranks backfired horribly, and always just on me, or they intensified the training regime. They never told me it was punishment for it but I know, I just know why they were doing it. I don't think I'll ever accept something without first carefully analyzing what is consists of...

Apart from my hellish training I tended to spend a lot of time with Rio to play pranks on everything and everyone around the city. So many poor, poor Kunugigaoka students whose suffering I relished in. Maybe if they weren't such huge pricks I wouldn't have done anything. I also spent some time with Okuda, watching her make some chemicals some of which gave me great ideas for pranking.

The few times I saw Nagisa outside our training regime I could see that he was still not fully recuperated from the trauma in Paris. I often saw Akari with him keeping him company and offering obvious support. There is something that they are hiding from me because what happened looked more like the resurfacing of previous trauma, but I know not to ask. Some things should just remain private unless they decided to share it. I'll respect their privacy and help them in out mission.

Though I met someone who I wished I hand't met. Nagisa and Akari's description of his character is simply not enough to actually describe the monster...

.

 _-(September 3rd)-_

.

 _-(Yukimura household)_

.

 **-Nagisa, Akari(P.O.V.), Karma, Aguri & Yanagisawa-**

My sister had told me that I could invite some people for dinner and I readily agreed. I called Nagisa and Karma, confirmed that they were free and then asked them to come. Everything pointed to a nice dinner with my sister and friends but after everyone came in my sister looked like she was still waiting for someone. Some minutes later the door bell rung and I went to open the door. I opened it and it was a miracle that I manage to school my features into indifference and control the urge to bash the **worm** 's head in. Standing at the door was none other than Yanagisawa, the disgusting vermin.

"Hello, so you must be Aguri's little sister right? A pleasure to meet you."

I barely managed to control my fury at how fake he sounded and ground out. "A pleasure. My sister is inside waiting, come in."

If he noticed my anger then he hid his reaction well because he simply smiled and went in. I sprinted towards the dining room to warn and Nagisa and Karma. I got near them and whispered. "Try not to react to much, the bastard is here and it would be a problem if we gave too much away."

They both looked confused for a bit but Nagisa quickly got a look of understanding and a scowl developed in his face. Karma took a bit longer but soon he got what I meant and a similar scowl appeared.

Yanagisawa entered the room, greeted my sister and then turned to us. He seemed to be analyzing us as we tried our hardest not to give away how much we wanted him dead. Something must have slipped because he got a look of intrigue for a second but it quickly vanished. He walked towards us an greeted Karma and Nagisa. "Hello, I didn't know there would be more people here tonight. Are you Aguri's little sister's friends? I'm Yanagisawa Kotaro, Aguri's fiancée " I just wanted to punch him when he said that. Disgusting bastard.

Nagisa bit the bullet and spoke first. "Yes, we are Akari's friends. My name is Shiota Nagisa. A pleasure to meet you." I don't think a phrase could be dripping with more sarcasm than Nagisa's though Yanagisawa remained unaffected.

Karma decided to also introduce himself. "I'm Akabane Karma, it's a pleasure." He looked very uncomfortable speaking to the man we wanted to kill.

Yanagisawa did not seem in any way affected by our reactions and just smiled. He then looked at Aguri putting the food on the table and spoke. "Well, I guess it is better for us to go eat before the food goes cold. It wouldn't do to spoil Aguri's cooking now would it?"

His attempts to seem friendly made me want to puke. From the look in Karma and Nagisa's faces they felt the same way. It just seemed wrong and vile.

We sat down and started eating, trying our damn hardest not to do anything suspicious. Yanagisawa made very generic questions, like where we studied, where we were from, what we liked to do, the normal things one asks when getting to know something. The problem was that none of us had any intention whatsoever of getting along with him but we were forced to put up a facade because of my sister.

As soon as we finished dinner we excused ourselves to my room. I don't think we could have moved faster than we did. We just could not wait to get away from him.

We sat down on my bed and took some time to relax. That was one experience we had no desire to repeat any time soon.

After laying down a bit just trying to calm down Karma spoke up. "I can say with all certainty, that after meeting the guy, I hate him. He just felt so fake and vile. Like you could never trust a word he said. And the way he looked at us sometimes, it was like he was deciding who to use in his experiments."

"Yeah, that's pretty much the worm. Both me and Nagisa have known of what he does for some time now and we have felt complete disgust for the kind of person he is. He is simply not human anymore."

"Indeed, the bastard just loves to cause suffering. His experiments are sickening and he stops at nothing to complete his objectives. Just seeing him again hardens my resolve to end him."

"Now more than ever I will help you two. That man. No, that monster needs to be stopped. After seeing what he created I had already decided never to abandon this fight, but after seeing him in person, I want to be there when he is ended."

We all agreed on it. Yanagisawa would fall, no creature like him should ever exist and we would be the ones to send him into his early grave.

.

 _-(September 11th - Beginning of the 2nd term of the first year of junior high)-_

.

 _-(In front of Kunugigaoka's main entrance)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Kaede & Karma-**

Another school term was starting. Akari, Karma and I were standing in front of the entrance door, all of us contemplating what had passed and what would come to pass. This break brought many new developments which could mean a completely unexpected future. It is in our hands to secure the best possible outcome within this mess of variables. But one thing we all have clear in our minds: Yanagisawa will not succeed.

"Well, after this break I don't know if I'll get used to seeing Akari with green pigtails. You two really are involved in a complicated mess."

I chuckled a bit at what he said. "And now so are you. This is a mess you'll be responsible for solving too. Also remember, it's Kayano Kaede, we don't want anyone discovering her true identity."

"Yeah, yeah I know. So any plans for this term? Or the break after?"

I pondered for a bit. "Hm, not really. We'll just see how it goes and prepare for when an opportunity comes. For now, let's enjoy our school life, even if it is in Kunugigaoka."

Karma laughed. "Try not to terrify everyone around you with killing intent whenever you see the headmaster. It would be problematic if the gym started smelling awful."

Akari found the jab Karma sent at me funny and giggled while I just blushed in embarrassment.

"Well, let's go. No use in delaying this. To a new school term and a successful future."

We all laughed and headed into the school. I was sure I could feel the headmaster's gaze on us but contrary to most students, that is not something we feared so we simply went in like nothing happened, though I made sure to look eyes with him at least once. To a new term and new discoveries!


	13. Chapter 12 - Fun with friends

_Hello everybody!_

 _Sorry for uploading this so very late but life is busy and I tend to get far too distracted sometimes. With the exam and all the extra stuff it become awful._

 _I was unable to finish writing the past two days because my mood was not at all a writing one and I refuse to force myself to write and end up uploading something subpar. It's awful when that happens but not much that I can do besides try and find inspiration._

 _So anyways, here is the new chapter. It is a bit slice of lifey as more of a break from all the action but I hope it is still enjoyable._

 _As said before I welcome any constructive criticism and if possible tell me if I missed some typos (though preferable notify me of these through PM in order not to spam the reviews with typo notifications) as that helps me a lot._

 _Anyways, see ya hopefully this weekend!_

 _-RicartElit_

 _._

 _-(After the first school day of the second term)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Kaede, Karma & Rio-**

I had forgotten how dreadfully boring classes were. The fact that I know everything they're teaching makes the boredom even more pronounced which turns a monotone, if necessary, activity into a snoozefest. I don't think I have enough fingers to count the amount of times the various teachers called me and Aka-Kaede, must remember, to attention but nonetheless we just couldn't keep our attention glued to the board. At least when they tried to humiliate us by asking a question about the subject being discussed we knew the answer and as such were able to get away with a bit of grumbling from the teacher. Karma though, they were far too used to to even try and make him pay attention, the lucky guy.

We had miraculously made it through every class without actually falling asleep, though we were close a few times, and so were walking home when we heard someone call us.

"Hey! Wait up!"

The three of us turned around to see Nakamura Rio running to join us. I didn't know what to think about that as she usually hung out with Karma alone, not to say that we weren't friends, but the two of them got along far better, being prankster demons and all. We just stopped and waited a bit for her to catch up.

"*huff puff* Please don't make me run like that again after you guys."

I looked at her confused. How could we have known she wanted to join? "So... why did you sunddenly decide to come with us?"

"Hmmm? Just wanted to hang out a bit and as Karma is with you, I'll go with you too. Besides, we have hung out sometimes too, you were the one who introduced me and Karma."

Kaede cringed. "And what a mistake that was. You should really be more careful Nagisa."

Karma and Rio let out some amused chuckles and he spoke. "Then who would be there to amuse you guys? Double the people, double the fun!"

"I would hope for someone not absolutely insane..."

The duo just looked amused at Kaede's remarks. Rio got a thoughtful look and then said teasingly:

"So, I heard you two went to Paris in the break and took Karma with you leaving lil' ol' me all alone. Did your parents think the two of you needed a third wheel to make sure nothing innapropriate happened?"

Kaede and I just spluttered and I could feel my face getting hotter. I quickly derrailed that train of thought.

"No! We just wanted to bring a friend with us and Karma just happened to be the closest one."

Karma got a look of mock hurt. "So it was just because I was the closest one? Not because I was your closest friend or anything like that? You'll make me cry."

Kaede just looked at him annoyed. "Don't even go there Karma, stop being an idiot."

I just thought that the scene was really amusing. At least like this we could sometimes forget, even if just for a bit, that we had greater responsibilities and the fate of those important to us in our hands. These day-to-day situations were good for us to relax a bit.

Rio's voice broke my moment of reflection. "So, where were you guys going?"

I was the one to answer this one. "Just going home. Our houses are more or less in the same direction so we decided to walk together."

"Then why don't we all go somewhere? We could go to a café or an arcade and spend some time. It would be fun!"

We all thought about it for a bit and then nodded.

.

 _-(Arcade)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Kaede, Karma, Rio & Yukiko-**

We had spent sometime chatting on a little peaceful café, just enjoying ourselves and talking about our daily lives. Rio had been very curious about our trip to Paris so we had to tip toe a bit around certain dangerous subjects, after all we couldn't let it slip that we had illegally infiltrated a laboratory that housed a madman's dangerous experiment. I'm pretty sure that would have gotten us locked up somewhere.

It was certainly a good time but, not wanting it to end so soon we ended up moving to the arcade to play some games. My mother probably won't bother me too much about arriving later than usual...

When we arrived we decided to search for games to play. Karma, unsurprisingly, zoomed in on a 2-player fighting game which was quite crowded because of a few players that were said to be unbeatable, which only prompted him to instantly decide to beat them and as such went into the crowd. Rio, wanting to see the faces of those who lost to him and then challenge him herself followed right after. Kaede and I just chuckled at their antics. Well, if Karma couldn't control himself then we would keep searching among the machines for something we would like to play.

As we searched across the arcade we ended up finding a familiar face playing on one of the machines. Kanzaki Yukiko, on her old rebellious getup, was playing an arcade shooter game while surrounded by various people. There were also some thug-like guys propped againsta wall watching her. When Kaede noticed them she seemed to remember something which she procceded to tell me.

"Those guys are the ones who kidnapped us in Kyoto. I remember them saying that they had plans to kidnap Yukiko before she vanished from here."

Remembering those guys made me frown. Them kidnapping my friends would be enough to make me livid but the fact that they dared to kidnap Kaede, now THAT was unforgivable. After we leave I'll just have to make sure they do not attempt anything "funny" ever again. Despite it being distasteful, sometimes a bit of fear can go a long way in solving problems...

Shacking my head to dispel my train of thought I tugged a bit on Kaede's sleeve and we went on to meet Yukiko.

"Hey, Yu-Kanzaki-san!" I called, almost forgetting that we did not yet have the same familiarity as in our future-past. "Didn't know you hung out around these places."

For a moment it looked like she was going to jump out of her skin with how startled she was. She must have really been concentrating on that game... The crowd parted a bit, some looking very disappointed, and she came talk to us.

"O-oh, Shiota-san, Kayano-chan? I didn't know you two came to the arcades." Oh? It appears she is already a bit more familiar with Kaede and as such she was the one to answer.

"Well, we usually don't but we were with Karma and Rio so we decided to come here, thought they got sidetracked trying to beat some guys back there and rub it in their faces. You know how Karma is."

Everyone was aware of Karma and his little sadistic side, and with him Rio so Yukiko just chuckled a bit at the idea.

"So, you're wearing a bit of a different clothing style than usual and you painted you hair. Not at all your usual look."

She looked a bit embarassed to have been found by people she knew and blushed.

"W-well, I sometimes just want to relax a bit so I get rid of my proper outfit and come to the arcade to unwind."

We knew of her reasons but decided to let it go and fake ignorance on the subject. Seeing the awkward mood rising I intervened, trying to bring us to a more casual one.

"So, now that we're here, wanna play some games with us?"

She smiled, happy that the subject had been dropped.

"Yeah, I think that would be fun."

After that, knowing that we would spend more time than predicted playing, we phoned our homes to ask permission to stay out for a bit longer. Kaede's sister quickly relented after hearing she would be accompanied by me and three other friends. My mother though took a bit more time to convince but in the end relented. We ended up spending 2 hours playing games, with money coming from Kaede's never ending supply (her job must really be profitable), and had a lot of fun. Our reaction time, honed by our assassination training, helped a lot in these games and we managed to do pretty well, though not nearly enough to beat Yukiko who must have had a lot more experience and skill in playing them. All in all, it was a great time and an amazing way to unwind and get rid of the stress sitting on our shoulders.

In the end it came the time to go back home for all of us. We saw that Karma and Rio were already walkign towards us, enormous grins almost splitting their faces and leaving behind a few depressed people and so we reunited with them. I chuckled at their antics.

"So, had a good time in there?"

Karma's grin got even wider. "Yup, they were so very confident on their prowess at the start that it was fun to crush their confidence."

I shook my head at how Karma-like that was. "I hope you didn't leave the poor guys traumatized."

Rio just laughed. "Of course not. Just a little bit depressed, nothing more. Also, I see you two found someone else."

Karma, who had yet to notice Yukiko turned towards her. "Kanzaki? Oh that is unexpected. You look very different from normal, I don't think I can really picture you and the usual refined and graceful girl at school as the same person."

Seeing the situation becoming uncomfortable again I interrupted.

"We found Kanzaki-s" Yukiko coughed looking a bit miffed. "Yukiko-san I mean, and decided to play some games with her. She showed us the ropes and we had a load of fun."

"You guys were pretty good at it though, did you ever play an arcade game before?"

I shook my head. Arcade games were not really one of my usual interests and my mom didn't really allow me to go to an arcade most times... Kaede shook her head in negative too.

"Not really, this was my first time playing." Technically not a lie, I have yet to play them in this timeline. "I've never really had much interest in these games."

"Then you two are naturals! You played really well, it was pretty amazing."

"We still didn't beat you." Kaede pointed out.

"Well, I've been playing for a few years already so it's not really expected for a newcomer to beat someone with far more experience. For first time players you two would be able to crush many other I played against who already had a good bit more experience. You really are good players."

We smiled at the compliment. I looked at my phone and saw that it was getting late already.

"Well, it's time to leave. Wanna come with us?"

"Yeah, it's time for me to go too. I would appreciate the company."

"Then let's go!"

As we were walking towards the exit I saw a certain group exit through a backdoor that lead to an alley. Deciding to move quickly I gave my friends an excuse.

"You guys go ahead. I have something I need to do real quick. I'll meet you at the exit."

They looked confused but I didn't give them enough time to ask questions and sprinted towards the backdoor, now hidden from their view.

.

 **-Kaede(P.O.V.), Karma, Rio & Yukiko-**

We were all looking confused at Nagisa's back. Rio being the first to get over her surprise asked:

"So... Any idea what that was about?"

We all shook our heads.

"Nope, I don't think any of us knows what just happened." I confusedly said.

Not knowing what else to do, we just did as Nagisa said and walked toards the exit. After 10 minutes of waiting and talking we saw Nagisa come back, his clothes a bit ruffled and his hair having one pigtail lower than the other. I quickly moved in to fix it and straighten out his clothing.

"So... what did you do Nagisa?" I asked slowly.

"Nothing much, just taking out the trash. It stunk really bad. So, let's go?"

Not knowing how to take what he said and simply deciding to accept that answer we all walked away towards our homes chatting happily all the way.

.

 **-General P.O.V.-**

If anyone had bothered to look at the alley this is the scene that would greet them:

Five thugs sprawled on top of the trash bags and on the floor, very bruised and some of them bleeding a bit. The only conscious one whimpering and mumbling a stream of incoherent words mostly about some "demonic looking snake" and the "evil chibi". Some of the bags aroudn them looked ripped and some boxes and trash cans damaged. Small blood splatters were on the floor and walls. Despite that, they were all alive.

When their friends noticed they were missing and went to find them they were unable to understand what happened and even after all of them woke up they were too traumatized and terrified to say anything which would be of use to identify the attacker in order to take revenge.

The five of them could only think of the terrifying child-monster who attacked them and threatened against ever trying to touch any girl without her consent...


	14. Chapter 13 - Development and new plans

_Hello everyone!_

 _It appears that I am never going to upload on shcedule anymore. xD_

 _My whole weekend was occupied hanging out with people and monday I had to help my father do something. And then Tuesday the website decides it is a good idea to stop working. It was simply frustrating._

 _Anyways, here I am with a new chapter which I really hope you like._

 _See ya next weekend, hopefully._

 _-RicartElit_

 _P.S.: I have something I want your opinion on. I will put it at the end of the chapter so you can enjoy the read before having to give me your feedback._

 _._

 _-(During the month and a half after last chapter)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa's P.O.V.-**

Six long weeks had passed. The daily routine of school, socializing, training and investigating got pretty boring after a while so I started dedicating myself more to try and rekindle old friendships to what they were before and watch those around me.

Since that first day of school I started hanging out more with both Rio and Yukiko, as did Kaede and Karma. Many times did we go along with Rio's and Karma's insane plans to prank people, which usually did makes us laugh a lot. Well, except when they once again figured out that I looked like a girl. Just when I thought I had enough with my mother, those two started teasing me and tried to force me into dresses, skirts, and other feminine clothing. It was a complete nightmare. At least with Yukiko and Kaede I am able to relax a bit more and have fun, as we tend to just go to an arcade and let loose a bit just playing games and chatting. We did see those thugs a few times, though they always tried to keep as far away from us as possible, which caused Yukiko to look confused and Kaede to start putting the pieces together. I just hope that when she figures it out she isn't too mad that I went out of my way to teach them a lesson.

I also started noticing certain differences from the original timeline and figuring out other that I had already noticed. The first one was the fact that Rio was in fact, in class A. I never remembered her being a good enough student to be in class A which had confused me since the beginning of the year until I remembered what she told us in our past-future. She was a great student in elementary but because of her loneliness started goofing off and ended up forgetting how to study. I think that the fact me and Kaede befriended her made it so her loneliness never got unbearable and so she never lost her good grades, and adding Karma meeting her to the mix explains the resurection of the goofy and fun-loving part of her personality. I don't know how this will work out in the end because this way she won't end up in class 3-E so I must figure this out later. I really hope not too many things like this change and I want out old class to stay the same.

The other change that I saw was Karma's and Rio's behaviour when they're together. In the previous timeline Karma and Okuda were very close and ended up becoming a couple, and I think Rio was still trying to find someone who she truly liked. This appears to have changed with me introducing Rio and Karma. The two of them having known eachother for very long have become increasingly close along the years and I suspect they are gaining an interest in eachother, with no apparent interest of Karma's in Okuda. I do not know how I feel about this change but I refuse to meddle with matters of the heart. If he truly starts dating Rio and they are a successful couple then more power to them, who am I to try and force Karma into dating Okuda, after all even if they're technically the same person with our interfeerence the two Karmas from both timelines have slightly diverging personalities. This Karma is slightly less agressive and violent than the original one and his pranks are less harmful towards his friends. He is also more social and hangs out with us more than old Karma would have. Them being two different people it is expected for their lives to follow two different paths so there is little reason for me to meddle.

I also noticed a bit of change in Yukiko. Despite keeping her prim and proper behaviour at school, with friends she was much more relaxed and opened up a bit more to us, even going as far as explainign why she had the two personas. I think being able to talk freely with us made her happier.

Appart from this, my days went by normally. Me and Kaede hung out with people in our free time or trained Karma to become a better assassin. Whenever he missed a training session because of spending time with anyone or just lazing around we made him work extra hard in the next one. There was no way we were going to let him shirk out on his training.

At the very least I was able to spend a good bit of alone time with Kaede between school and her occasional acting job. I always loved the time we spent together and I don't think I could like anybody as much as I like her.

.

 **-Kaede's P.O.V.-**

Life went by as normal, well as normal as it can be for a group that is working towards saving the world. Going to school again was not yet something I was used to, part of me feels very weird about it, like a deep feeling of wrongness, of something that just isn't right. But there's nothing I can do about it as despite my mental age, I am still physically twelve and as such I have to go to school wether I like it or not.

I still have my acting career which, as I have not put it on hiatus it in order to go to school, is blooming. I have more fame than I had at this age in our last timeline. It was a bit jarring to have so many fans at such an young age but as I was used to even higher amounts from when I was older I could manage it. At the very least my identity was covered with two personas so no one would recognize me, Haruna Mase in my acting carrer and Kayano Kaede at school. This made it so I was easily able to maintain my personal life separate from my career. Though it still consumed a lot of my time.

When I was not acting or attending school I spent time with my usual group of friends with the addition of Rio and Yukiko. It's very nice to expand my circle of close friends as it makes it a lot more fun to go out, not that Karma and Nagisa are boring, far from it actually, but there are things guys don't understand as well as girls, even if said girls are psychologically 12 years younger than you are. I hung out with Rio and Yukiko alone quite a few times in order to enjoy activities Nagisa dn Karma wouldn't like. The five of us also went as a group sometimes to the arcade like we did that first day of school to have fun though I curiously noticed the thugs that I recognized from last time staying as far away as possible from us, I wonder if Nagisa has something to do with that... Anyways, we also followed Karma and Rio when they were running around with their usual antics, watching as they pranked other poor unsuspecting students.

I also noticed somethign interesting. Karma and Rio are getting increasingly close. They sometimes blushed when looking at each other and then pretended nothing had happened, or sneaked glances at one another. It was an interesting change from our previous timeline as I know that before Karma and Okuda were an item. But if these two wanted to be together then I would fully support them. It also made a very good teasing subject whenever me and Yukiko were alone with Rio, which was a nice way to get payback on her after all the times she teased me. The way she blushed and tried to divert attention from the subject was just too funny. I wonder if any other relationships would change because of our accidental meddling.

Every other day and in the weekends Nagisa and I also trained Karma. We needed to make sure he was ready to deal with our future missions as they were prone to getting increasingly dangerous, especially the chaos that would probably unfold when we rescued my sister. He left our sessions often exhausted but that was to be expected, he had to become very proficient with what we taught him.

In the midst of all these activities I still had some time to spend with Nagisa alone. Being with him and knowing that he is there and no longer borderline suicidal is very soothing. I still believe that this trip through time was one of the best things to happen in our life as it had permitted Nagisa to heal a bit from his crippling depression, and though he is still not completely free of his dark thoughts and probably won't be until we finally complete our mission he is far, far better than before. I don't know what I would have done if that accident had not caused us to leap through time and I had survived...

 **-Karma's P.O.V.-**

School was boring. When you are capable of comprehending all subjects as easily as I was, it simply became hopelessly dull. Despite that I still had to pay some attention. I have absolutely no clue how Nagisa and Kaede were capable of paying little to literally no attention and still ace their tests, it was simply unbelievable.

Outside of school I spent a lot of my time with Kaede, Nagisa, Yukiko and Rio. We usually just hung out as a group either hitting the arcade, walking around the city or pulling pranks on people, nothing very special but a good way to unwind after the hellish training Nagisa and Kaede put me through. And it was trully a training from hell. They simply never allowed me a moment of rest, pushing me harder and harder until I can barely move. I know they want me to be ready and I already saw what kind of things we're up against but this is becoming ridiculous! At least I know they are great teachers so I don't have to worry about exhausting myself for nothing.

I also tended to spend a lot of time alone with Rio just pulling pranks all around the city or talking about our lives. We have been friends for years now since Nagisa introduced us and we have gotten along pretty well since then. At first Rio was very tame and seemed a bit introverted but after some time I was able to pull her out of her shell and she quickly became one of my closest friends. I guess along the years we have been become more and more at ease with eachother but nowadays we are almost unable to look eachother in the eyes. It just becomes a bit embarrasing to do it and we end up blushing up a storm. I am in no way naive enough to not know what is happening, but I'll let it develop at it's own pace, especially because I don't want to involve her in anything like our operations. I would hate to see her hurt or broken so I intend to protect her from what we do at all costs.

I just hope we are successful in our mission, as I do not think I have enough power to protect her from the end of the world...

.

 _-(October 27th - Middle of the second term)-_

 _._

 _-(Clearing in class 3-E's hill)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Kaede, Karma & Ritsu-**

We had been called by Ritsu to this clearing like the first time Kaede and I met because she said she ahd important information to relay and she wanted to minimize the risks of being overheard.

When we arrived we waited 5 minutes before we heard a familiar voice coming from our phones.

"Hello. It's nice to see you guys again. I've been quite busy these past few days managing all our projects and analysing the data we got. Through this I've got a few pieces of information you might be interested in."

So we finally had something more out of all that data...

"Tell us what you found Ritsu." I told her.

"Well, through a few mentions on the data and some hijacked spy satellites I was able to find the precise location about both the lab in the Australian desert and the one in the Rocky Mountains. In case you don't remember, the first houses the remains of Subject 03 and the second holds the living Subject 02. We are already halfway through the second term and we'll have to choose a target to hit in the next break. It will be far harder to get to that destination as it is more remote and we'll be unable to take Kaede's sister with us as adult supervision."

Kaede looked confused. "Why can't she come with us?"

"Imagine what would happen if everytime your sister went on holidays to a place close to one of the labs, that lab was hit. What would happen?"

Her eyes widened in horror and I put my hand on her shoulder for support. "Yanagisawa would think she was the culprit and target her. We can't allow that to happen!"

"And that is exactly why she can't come with us. We will have to carefully choose our target and plan our infiltration. I have no access to the networks of those labs so it will have to be a mostly blind infiltration which carries many risks. We must not be careless or we will end up in immense danger."

We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing the various possibilities and narrowing down our possible plans. Despite that no conclusive pln was formed and it was getting late so we decided to discuss this again later.

We all separated after getting to the bottom of the mountain with a lot more to think about than when we climbed.

.

 _-(Unknown)-_

.

- **Ritsu(P.O.V.)-**

My pet project was taking shape. Slowly but surely all the pieces were falling into place and in the end, I'll be able to help my friends to a far bigger degree than before.

Almost all the research necessary was done. Having a few research teams paid to keep silence working on it and my endless supply of information helped speed it up a lot. Now all I needed was to figure out the last little kinks in the project and find somebody to manufacture it. All in all, it would still take a bit of time but I should have it by the time the next summer break comes along.

Soon I'll have the capability to protect them. After it is done I will never again feel helpless while I watch them go through unimaginable danger. It will simply not happen, I'll make sure of it.

Project Palingenesia was almost finished...

* * *

Well, here's what I wanted your opinion on:

I have been thinking about what I wanted to write after finishing this story, even though this one will still last a good while more.

Some people have been giving em suggestions but sometiem ago I came up with one which I am starting to obsess with and I want to know if you find it interesting. Here's the premise:

You know how Korosensei, Akari and Itona were asked by the tentacles what they wanted to be/what they wanted to do? Well that gave me an idea for another time travel fic.

It would be a story with a darker atmosphere than this one. My idea is that in the end everythign that could go wrong went wrong and Nagisa is the only survivor (could change). In his desperation he found a vial of tentacle substance and injected himself. With the tentacle influence clouding his mind, when he is asked the question, he asked something along the lines of fixing his mistakes, or saving all his friends. As the reality bending things that they are, the tentacles bring Nagisa to the past. He wakes up confused but in the end sees it as a new opportunity to redo everuthing. Though this past Nagisa is not the same. With all the trauma he became darker and ruthless though not to the point of becomign a monster, more of a Greyish!Nagisa, more willing to do what needs to be done. Now another thing that can vary is if Nagisa takes over young Nagisa's body, or if he appears in the past with his own body, in both outcomes he keeps the tentacles.

I really would love to hear your opinion on this idea. Also, as I probably won't be doing it for a while, anyone who wants to write using this idea or just changing it a little and making their own story can do it, as long as they give credit where it is due.

Thanks for reading.

-RicartElit


	15. Chapter 14 - Ikemen and final planning

_Hey! Very late chapter but better late than never, right? Right? Guys?_

 _Anyways, I hope you like it._

 _I have made the discovery that I tend to be very reluctant and lazy to start writing but once I start that reluctance vanishes, funny huh?_

 _Also, there will be no chapter next week because I'll be out of town. I'm sorry for that but there is no way around it._

 _I'll see you in two weeks!_

 _-RicartElit, laziest writer alive._

 _P.S: For those unaware, I have a story idea in the end of the last chapter to which I'm still open to suggestions. Though I really doubt you could get into this chapter and remain unaware or it. Anyways, the reminder is given._

* * *

 _._

 _-(December 1st - Nearing the end of the second term)-_

 _._

 _-(Kunugigaoka Junior High)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Kaede, Karma, Rio & Yūma-**

Another day of school had ended. These last few weeks had not been very demanding, simply playing along with the teachers, going all over the place with my friends, planning what to do in the 10 days of winter break with our group. All in all, not very exhausting. The only thing of slightly more interest that happened was the midterms which we aced. Now we only had to wait a few days for the 2nd term finals and we would be ready for the break.

We were walking out of the school, I hand in hand with Kaede and Karma and Rio a bit closer than a few weeks ago. The amount of teasing Kaede and I gave them because of it was enormous but it looked like Karma was holding back for some reason. Well, whatever floats his boat.

Rio had been studying quite a bit, and she probably thought we had been too so she suggested a break by going to a café that had opened recently. It's name was familiar but I couldn't remember why. It was pretty close to school so we only took a bit to get there.

As we entered the establishment the feeling of deja vú got even stronger but I still couldn't put my finger on why until the waiter came to take our order and froze in place.

"Welcome, may I take you or-guh..."

Isogai stood there, as if paralyzed by our gazes. He had paled considerably and I could pretty much guess why. After all, Kunugigaoka students were not supposed to work. Seeing this I decided to ease his worries.

"Hey, don't worry Isogai. I don't think anyone in this table will report you to the school."

He relaxed considerably, but still looked warily towards the other, waiting for confirmation.

"Yeah, we have no problem with you working here. That rule is a bit stupid, though I never thought that and ikemen like you would be workign at a café." Rio told him teasingly. Both Karma and Kaede nodded, smiling all the while.

He let out a relieved sigh and relaxed completely.

"Thanks, I don't know what I would have done if the Five Virtuosos were the ones to walk through that door."

Both Akari and I shared a look, remembering the ridiculous Bo-taoshi match we had before. Despite not being as well known as before as we were still on our first year, the Five Virtuosos were already ascending to fame because of their association with Asano. Though they weren't getting there as fast as before because of me and Kaede who had grades close to theirs without paying attention in class.

"Well, what do you guys want?"

We put our orders and waited as he went to get them.

When he came back and gave us what we had ordered for Rio decided to ask when his shift ended.

"Well, I didn't start that much time ago but today I should leave in maybe... three hours? Yeah, more or less three hours. Why?"

"Maybe we could come back when you left and hang out a bit. After all, who wouldn't want to know about out local ikemen." Rio was having too much fun teasing the poor guy.

Isogai looked a bit embarrassed but agreed to spend some time with us.

We left after chatting a bit more and went around the park a bit, waiting for the three hours to pass. We even got to see some thugs jump into a lake after seeing me which was kinda fun, though everyone else was kinda confused, well maybe not Kaede which I think is starting to suspect me having done something. I'm perfectly innocent I tell you!

As the time to find Isogai approached we headed towards the café again and saw him preparing to leave.

"Oh, hey! I was waiting for you."

He joined us and we decided to just walk around the city and talk. Despite being from our past-future class, Kaede and I had not spent much time with him. We had met as childen in this timeline and played a bit but I think after some time Isogai's father died and he stopped coming around as much. He probably started working early wherever he could find work in order to support his mother and siblings.

"So, K-I haven't seen you in a while Isogai. We used to play a bit when we were younger." I had almost said Kaede and I but I remembered in time that Isogai met her as Akari and not as her curent persona. I needed to be careful and not let that slip.

"Yeah, I remember playing with you and Akari a few times. Oh, by the way, how is she? I haven't seen her either in a long time. I hope she and Yukimura-san are doing ok"

Isogai had met Kaede's sister and always referred to her as Yukimura-san for some reason, even if she told her to just call her Aguri. Also, Karma was trying very hard not to look at Kaede.

"Oh, they are doing fine. I have spent some time with Akari a few days ago." Which was technically not lying. I did spent time with Kaede a few days ago, just like I did the days after including today and the days before.

"Good to know. Some things came up so I didn't have as much time to go out."

Rio chose that moment to butt in our conversation.

"Oh, who are these people Isogai is talking about?"

"A childhood friend of mine and her sister."

"So that friend would be Yukimura Akari right? That name is slightly familiar... Wait, I read somewhere that Haruna Mase's true name was Yukimura Akari! Is she the same one?"

Isogai's eyes lit up in realization.

"I knew Haruna Mase seemed familiar on TV but I could never figure out why! Did you know Nagisa?"

"Yeah, I did. She told me some time after starting her acting career."

Rio was starting to get very excited.

"I love the way she looks on TV! You have got to introduce me to her. It must be awesome knowing a famous actress."

Knowing that this could lead to disaster I decided to try and nip it in the bud.

"Akari is pretty busy with her career so she rarely has much time nowadays. I don't know if I can get you two to meet. But I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks Nagisa!"

Rio seemed a bit pacified but she would eventually start bugging me again about this. Well at least for now the disaster was averted. Isogai was still a bit amazed.

"I can't believe I used to play with a famous actress! It's so awesome."

"I just see her as Akari. Wether or not she is an actress not much changed."

"You still spend time with her so I guess you would feel like that but for me who didn't know about it and haven't seen her for so long it feels unreal."

Seeing that this conversation was going nowhere I changed topic.

"So, why were you working at that café? You do obviously know abou the school rule or you wouldn't have been so distressed."

Isogai's mood fell a bit and he appeared reluctant to answer. I already knew the answer but didn't want to make him uncomfortable .

"You don't need to answer if you don't want to! I won't pry."

He quickly shook his head, smiled and answered.

"It's no problem, I just don't like talking about it. I need the money to help my mother and my siblings. My father died so we don't get as much income as we used to."

I still faked surprise but my condolences were real.

"Sorry to hear that. Your father was a pretty great man the few times I met him."

And he was indeed a good father. Too bad there was little I could do without knowing the circumstances around his death.

Isogai looked wistful but quickly cheered up again.

"Yeah, he was. But let's not talk about sad things anymore. How have **you** been Nagisa?"

"Hmmm? Pretty well. Still have to deal with my mother a bit but it has gotten better. Apart from that life has been going pretty good." Well, apart also from the nightmares and mild depression, an- let's get out of this unhelpful train of thought. I think my thoughts were a bit visible on my face as I noticed Kaede looking at me with concern obvious in her expression. Isogai though, didn't seem to have noticed as he simply kept talking.

"I can see that. You and Kaede are a bit famous all over the school. The "Sleeping Duo" they call you. Do you really barely pay attention to class?"

Rio laughed and decided to answer this one.

"It's true. Most times they are either looking away from the board, either at eachother or the window but sometimes they fall asleep. The teachers don't don't find it very funny that when they wake them up and asked a question they are able to answer it. It's actually pretty funny."

"It must be great to be able to get good grades that easily. I wish I could do it. Also are you two actually a couple or is it just rumor?"

Kaede looked confused. "I thought is was a well known fact already. We are not trying to hide it or anything so it's weird that it is just a rumor."

"You aren't flaunting your relationship around either so that's probably why. Though I still find it weird Nagisa. You and Akari were so close when we were younger that I actually thought you would end up dating."

Karma can't help but cough trying to block a laugh from coming out. At least they wouldn't know why he is laughing or it would be very obvious...

"Yeah, but things happened. With her job she got more and more occupied so we spent less and less time together. I guess we drifted apart a bit, though I'm still her friend." Akari, Karma and I knew that was a complete lie but the truth coming out would not be very convenient.

"Yeah, I guess that would happen. Too bad though, you could have a famous actress as your girlfriend. No offense Kayano."

"None taken."

Karma looked like he was going to explode if he had to contain his laughter more so I quickly changed the subject. We kept talking about random things about our lives and the world around us, from games, to manga, to movies, and just walking around the streets having fun. Being with friends was always soothing.

When it became late we all said goodbye to eachother and went on our merry ways towards our homes.

.

 _-(December 15th - Nearing the end of the 2nd term)-_

 _._

 _-(Clearing in class 3-E's hill)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Kaede, Karma & Ritsu-**

We had finished the finals a few days before when we decided it was time to reunite again. The winter break would be very short so we had to make do with our time. Our group made it's way once again to the clearing where we would make our decision.

Ritsu started the meeting by exposing a few bits of information.

"As you guys know we only have the possibility to infiltrate two of the remaining labs. Of those two I think one of them is far too risky. The entrance to the lab in the Australian desert is far too open. There is little no no possibility of sneaking around and it would take far too much work to actually get inside and then, if an emergency occured, extraction would be nearly impossible without whoever had entered the lab being detected. Thus, the logical option is the lab located in the Rocky Mountain which houses another live subject. Because of the isolated nature of the lab you'll be going in blind until you manage to connect me to the network and as such I have taken the precaution of adquiring a few devices that may help you escape detection. I will give you the location to pick them up later. Also, because of the possible danger and the fact that he still has little training, I suggest that Karma be put on standby and await the next operation. He can help once again from the backstage."

Karma didn't look too happy at being left behind again but he seemed to understand the reasoning.

I looked at both of my other friends after seeing them give their agreement to Ritsu's assessment of the situation I spoke.

"Very well, if you believe that to be the best approach that is what we'll do. Now we have to iron out the last few details. This mission will be very time restricted as the winter break lasts more or less 10 days. Of those we'll probably not be able to use 2 of them and that's only if we're really efficient as we'll have to have time to get there and then return. We must also be careful not to tip Yanagisawa of our involvment on the infiltrations. One of the greatest problems we face is the lack of adult supervision. Without an actual adult presence we'll be unable to act. Any ideas on how to solve that?"

Ritsu appears to also have a solution to this problem.

"Well, this one was a very hard one to solve. We could have had a few different routes, including the recruitment of a third party but that would be far too dangerous. As such I think we'll have to go the illegal way. I will have to bribe a few officials, blackmail some others and find a few loopholes to get you where you need to be. I'll also provide fake untraceable IDs and disguises in order for you not to be discovered. Though you will have to somehow justify the trip to your families."

Kaede looked like she had an idea.

"If you could fake the result to some contest as a once ina lifetime opportunity we might be able to get our families to accept it. The 'contest' could have people to supervise minors in the trip they won. That way we might just be able to get them to accept."

I nodded, it sounded like a good plan.

"That's as good as we're going to get with our limited resources. At least this way we should be able to make it to our objective."

Ritsu's voice piped up from the cellphone.

"I'll start manufacturind the material needed and making the connections necessary post-haste. I'll talk to you again when I'm done."

With a plan formulated we decided to go home to rest and think about our plan. It would need a lot of work but we would make it. Either that or doom the world. But that last one is just not an option. For our future we will survive.


	16. Chapter 15 - Rocky beginnings

_Well, it has been a bloody long time hasn't it?_

 _You see, I found out that Homestuck was awesome... And I spent a week binge-reading it. I recommend it, most definitely recommend it. It was one the most awesome experiences ever. Just... the Trickster Mode cannot be mentioned again, **ever**... Also, I get a whole new archive worth of fanfic to drown in! Cool right?_

 _Anyways, here's the chapter this week. Have fun!_

 _-RicartElit, easily distracted, laziest writer alive._

* * *

 _-(December 29th - Minutes before the start of the operation)-_

.

 _-(Rocky Mountains - Near isolated air duct)-_

 _._

- **Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari (in person)-**

The night was quite dark because of the new moon. We were standing outside one of the various air duct... exits? Is that how you call them? That doesn't matter right now. Anyways, Akari and I were standing near said duct because trying to enter through the main or back entrances is downright suicidal and for some reason nobody ever thinks that the ducts can be a good entryway for saboteurs and infiltrators. Or maybe it is the fact that they believe the giant, fast moving fan that helps move the ai around will discourage people, go figure. Such overconfidence will bring Yanagisawa's downfall.

The laboratory complex was big, really, **really BIG**. The amount of money Yanagisawa must have is unbelievable to build labs like this all over the world. It was coloured so as to be as inconspicuous as possible using the hues of the mountain and vegetation around it. There was a small clearing in front of the entrance where everyone who wanted to enter (at least those allowed to) had to pass through. We had been scouting around since we arrived and had managed to see at least 20 armed guards spread around the place, mostly at the entrances but some of them going around patrolling the place. It had been hard to get to where we currently were, especially with the lack of inside information as Ritsu just could not find a way in by herself. There were a few vehicles parked near the entrance, though they looked like they were going to depart soon enough. Most of the ones who came to stay went inside through the gate on the side of the mountain.

Soon we would start our second operation and we were both aware of the danger we would go through. With no populated area for more than 100 kilometers around us, perhaps even many more, any situation could quickly become life threatening. Even with all the new toys Ritsu provided us, we were still very nervous about this, but we had no choice, we had to do it. For them all, we had to.

I still remembered our last debriefing. Getting ready for this took a bit more time than expected but it is was still plenty for our objectives.

.

 _-(Flashback - December 29th, morning)-_

 _._

 _-(Nondescript motel)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari, Karma & Ritsu-**

We had arrived at the motel a few hours ago and started setting up the equipment and making sure we had everything necessary. Karma had built himself a little support station from where he could watch over us and help with various monitors and information sources. Akari and I were busy checking our bags to make sure nothing had been forgotten. We also had yet to open a package Ritsu sent us, per her own request.

We managed to get here though a series of convoluted transport switches that included 2 airplanes and 3 taxis. Ritsu really works her magic in arranging this kind of situations. And the best: the people we knew or that could cause us trouble were none the wiser. In the end Akari's idea of a contest was a bit convoluted and failure prone so we managed to arrange it as something the school awarded us for great grades by having Ritsu redirect any calls to herself and modifying her voice and mannerisms to match those of the headmaster. This part of the plan was the one most likely to expose us but for now nobody had found out about our escapade. To anyone not in the know we were on the United States to get more contact with a foreign culture.

Our other operation was not nearly as big as this one so we were understandably nervous and fidgety. It looked like the tension was about to become too great when Ritsu broke the silence.

"I think it is time for you to check the equipment I managed to obtain especially for this operation. You can open the package and spread the equipment over the fabric that is inside it."

Akari quickly moved to where the square box was located and proceeded to do as told. Inside there were a lot of things. Two weird full-body suits, various devices we could not identify, what looked to be tiny guns, and other easier to identify pieces of equipment, like a more advanced electronic lockpick and some things we used in the last infiltration.

"I'll start telling you what the equipment I obtained is. First we have the suits, these are especially prepared for a risky operation like this. They are made with a special fabric interwoven with a few nanobots Itona developed in the future which allow the suit to adjust to the colour of any surface you decide you want to hide against. They also are capable of emitting signals that can semi-scramble most security devices allowing you to more easily sneak around. Be aware that they are not perfect and undetectable so you still have to watch out for a lot of dangers. The part of the suit that covers the hands and feet is also capable of sticking to almost any surface to ensure easy climbing."

That sounded very awesome, and judging by both Akari's and Karma's faces they were completely in agreement with me.

"I have also gotten some devices which are capable of screwing with surveillance cameras as if making them crash for a moment. They make it so the footage starts looping but it is not as perfect as if I did it so it only works if the guards watching the camera feed are not intently watching through said camera. Make sure to hook them up to the tablets you can also see there to better control them. Now for the tablets, I have obtained and programmed one of these for each of you which will allow you to access what both me and Karma can, from the footage captured by the mini cameras you carry on your foreheads and on the back of your heads, to satellite coverage and if you are successful in connecting, security camera feed. Apart from that the tablet comes equipped with a military-grade flexible camera usually used to peek around corners or doors for threats. I have also managed to find someone who would develop another one of Itona's creations without a lot of fuss. Remember that electronic lockpick he showed us so long ago? There it is. In case you don't remember it is not only capable of picking any electronic lock, if given enough time, but also mold its little appendage to open any regular old lock. Apart from that you just have a few extras of the equipment you used before except a few things I thought prudent to obtain for such a dangerous event."

It all sounded like normal but incredibly useful infiltration equipment but that last remark made me feel a bit uneasy.

"A few of the last items are the little guns and their ammunition. They are both degradable dart guns, meaning that the darts will pretty much dissolve into the air after delivering their payload. They key difference is that instead of only supplying soporifics like last time I added a few other types of ammo. You have access to 3 new types of dart: the first one contains a disorientating poison which may cause the victim to lose focus for a but, perfect for sneaking around and the person will just think he or she is getting tired or spacing out; the second type can cause nausea which can be very useful if you need the person to leave a room as they will probably go vomit to some bathroom; and the last kind is to be used only on extreme circumstances. It is a very powerful lethal poison which will rapidly cause the victim to suffer from a heart attack and die. It is undetectable post-mortem so anyone who investigates should think that it was a fully natural heart attack as it will also provoke a rapid clogging of the arteries to disguise the cause of death being the substance. It is obvious though that if a whole bunch of people start dropping from heart attacks the source will be rapidly narrowed down to poison so don't be careless. The same applies to all the other darts, especially the soporifics and nausea-inducing ones."

All those darts sounded incredibly useful but that last one... I don't know how comfortable I am with taking someones life just like that. I did kill K-Korosensei, but still... That did not desensitize me at all, if anything it made me more uneasy about doing it. Akari looked pensive too so we at least agreed on this matter. I really hope we don't have to use them...

Akari spoke up after braking away from our apparently mutual train of thought.

"So, is that all the equipment? Because if so we need to start the last briefing before sleeping a bit so we can be rested by the start of the the operation."

"No, actually I was going to tell you about the last pieces of equipment in the briefing but I might as well tell you now: I got you some tool kits, very, very underpowered shaped charges and some special metal sealing substance. You will see in a bit why they're necessary. For now let me pull a satellite view of the lab area. I got this from a military satellite that I had the codes for, through... less than legal means."

On one of Karma's monitors a top-down view of the Rocky Mountains appeared and started zooming in on an isolated area. We started seeing some vehicles and what I could guess were people in a small clearing. There were also the contours of a strange shape in the mountain but it was hard to see.

"The operation will start at 9:00 PM tonight, you will need to be in position before that time. As you can see here, the lab is very isolated from civilization, hence increasing the danger of the infiltration by a great percentage. There are always at least 30 guards outside the facility. 15 on the main entrance, 9 on the back entrance/emergency exit and 6 patrolling around the area in pairs. I managed to obtain this number by observing the shift changes for a few weeks and this has been a consistent pattern. The vehicles on the outside are only stationed there momentarily and will soon leave, those who are to have a more permanent stay are driven to the inside of the facility."

Ritsu decided to stop to, probably make sure we were all following, and then started speaking again.

"Now, I have arranged an unmarked car that you can take in order to get closer to the facility, after that you will have to hide the vehicle and make your way to the lab on foot through a path that I will mark on your tablets. Once there you will also have marked a way to enter the premise undetected and make your way towards the point which I determined was most favourable to enter. At first I considered various way to infiltrate the facility but I ended up shooting them all own except one. Waltzing through the main entrances was obviously not an option and I briefly considered using one of the vehicles to hide in but it would be far too risky. Thus we are only left with one option: the air ducts. Any underground facility, especially one of the size I predict that one having needs a way to cycle air in and out, that way being the air ducts and the various turbines spread throughout them. These vents are mostly unguarded and easily accessible. The only problem would be the turbines you'll find at the start which block your way and spin fast enough to chop you into ribbons. If stopped, they are big enough to pass between the blades but if not, there is a far bigger chance you'll die. That is where that last equipment comes in. From a truck that came in in the last few months transporting a new turbine, probably because one broke, I was able to determine the model and more importantly, how it works. Using a tiny amount of the shaped charges you should be able to blow a hole into the wiring of the machine and from there using your tools stop it from working. After that you'll just need to go through it and repeat as many times as necessary to enter the lab proper. When the time to leave comes you will have to fix the turbines and use the sealant to cover the holes made by the explosive, making it undetectable and leave. Got all of that?"

We all nodded and Ritsu seemed satisfied with it but then she seemed to remember something.

"Oh, I also packaged a few more of the wireless devices you used last time to allow me access into the network. Make sure to remember to take them with you. Ok, now I'm pretty sure there is nothing else to talk about operation wise."

With the plan laid out we only spoke a bit and reassured each other of our success before going to sleep. It would be one hell of a trial.

.

 _-(Flashback end)-_

 _._

It was 8:59 PM, actually more like half a minute to 9:00 PM. Akari and I had already pulled out the grate which covered the duct and were getting ready to go in.

20 seconds to go. Our hearts were pumping fast because of the nerves.

10 seconds. Her and I shared a look of determination. We would do this, nothing else mattered.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and we dived, ready to face this new challenge.


	17. Chapter 16 - Level 1 (Part 1)

_Heeeellooooooo!_

 _It has been far too long... Oops? I guess I forgot to tell you that I was once again out of town for a week... And then the holiday laziness hit full force... Sorry..._

 _I might publish with more frequency as long as I'm writing this Arc because I have it planned far better than the others. Like shcematics and numbers and stuff... I am actually writing with a guideline for once, hurray!_

 _Anyways, here's the chappy! I hope you enjoy it._

* * *

 _-(December 29th - 9:20 PM)-_

 _._

 _-(Inside a small storage closet)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari (in person)-**

It had taken us a while to make our way through the vents but luckily we made it without raising suspicion. The process had been exactly like Ritsu described it, blow a hole, disable turbine, move on, so on and so forth. We had to do it 3 times before getting to where we are currently. With the little light that we allowed ourselves we could see some miscellaneous things, ranging from cleaning material to objects someone probably threw in there and forgot. It was a bit cramped but were were nonetheless glad that nobody had come in and found us.

"Ritsu, we're in. The room that we ended up in appears to be a small storage closet. We can hear footsteps outside from time to time and voices speaking to the left."

" _Ok. From the outside it appears nobody had noticed your entrance so the first order of business is reconnaissance. The faster the better as the disabled turbines will eventually be noticed which is not something we could avoid but be careful with how you do it. Sloppiness could be your downfall."_

"Very well, we'll use the tablet camera to look into the room past the door. Make sure to tell us if you see something we might miss."

Carefully so as to not make a lot of noise Akari opened her bag and pulled out her tablet. Using it's flexible camera we were able to peek underneath the door and find out what lied beyond it.

There was nothing special about the room, just a simple hallway. From what we could see it had 4 doors apart from the one we were peeking from. one to the right, one in front and two to the left. The one on the right and one of the two on the left was on the same wall as our own door. The other two doors were on the opposite one. A little past the right door and to the front of it the hallway seemed to turn and continue somewhere, though we were unable to see where. Apart from that we could see a surveillance camera overlooking the part of the hallway that lead away from the current one. It was comforting to see no guards and a camera facing away from us. After making sure it was stationary we turned off our own camera and played the recording on the tablet to make sure nothing was missed. Akari spoke up seeming to have seen something.

"Hey, next to the doors on the front, there appear to be little electronic things. We can't see it very well from here but do you think they're recognition devices? I wouldn't put it past a secret lab to have rooms locked only to certain people."

I smiled at her. "Hmm, you might be right. We'll need to go closer but that is probably what they are."

She beamed back at me until Karma decided to interrupt us.

 _"This is all warm and mushy but in case you forgot, you have a lot of sneaking around to do. So move it!"_

"Sheesh" I mumbled under my breath. Akari probably heard it because she giggled a bit.

"Well then, let's go. The bags are not made of the same material as the suits so we'll have to hide them here for now and only bring what is necessary. If we bury them under the piles of forgotten things here we should be able to hide them well enough to avoid detection if someone comes inside."

We had to decide what to bring along with us. A difficult decision considering that everything would be useful. In the end we managed to settle for a few items. Akari would bring one of the tablets inside a compartment of her suit plus the little gun with 5 of each non-lethal dart while I would bring one of the lock-picking devices and it's extras/cables. If needed we would later come back to switch what we were carrying.

Satisfied with our choices we pocketed everything we got, hid the bags and prepared to leave.

Looking at Akari once and seeing her nod I took and deep breath and opened the door.

Not surprisingly, nothing special happened. I was just like what we saw through the camera, pure white walls and ceiling, black floor and those same doors. The first thing we did was approach one of them. Next to it as deduced before was a little device and now more closely we could see it was a card reader. Above it read _"Lab 1 - LVL 1 ACCESS REQUIRED"_ on a small plaque. So the labs were numbered and from what we read there were various security levels. This would make accessing locked places harder than normal. Despite having the lock-picking device it would be preferable to get a card from one of the guards or scientists as it still took some time to break through the various safety measures.

From the inside of the room that we now knew was a lab we were able to hear voices talking. Because of the door it was very muffled so we couldn't understand anything and the doors fit the seam far too well to be able to slip a camera through without tampering and as such we were unable to divine what could be going on inside.

Seeing that this was a small hallway Akari and I decided to split for a bit and investigate the doors we hadn't already seen. In the end we agreed that I would check out the door to the right of the closet (or left if you were looking from the hallway to the closet) and the other hallway while she would check the two doors to the left. Hugging the walls so that our suits would cloak us we carefully starting moving.

I first decided to look into the adjacent hallway so no surprises could come from there though I had to be careful not to be spotted by the camera. It was far less remarkable than the hallway we were currently in, just a door in the middle leading to who knows where, though said hallway appeared to continue towards the entrance. There was also yet another hallway parallel to the one Akari and I were exploring which was also adjacent to this one. The only thing of greater interest were the guards. There were two of them chatting while standing in the intersection between the two other hallways (meaning the ones in which we were not standing). They were dressed in black outfits for no discernible reason as black contrasted with the walls. They were wearing what looked like body armor though I couldn't be sure from the distance and they were most definitely armed if the holster I saw in their belts was any indication. They didn't look like they were going to leave anytime soon so I went back to the door I was supposed to also be checking.

There wasn't anything interesting about the door itself. Unlike the other ones this one did not have a card reader so we could easily enter it. Above it was a plaque with the words _"Storage - Low Importance Items"_. So basically a room to store the things which were not deemed important for the greater projects, like the food and drink for the employees, probably basic repair materials and basic lab equipment and maybe uniforms... That is something to ponder. Not seeing anything else I sneaked away back to where Akari was to relay what I found.

Through the visor of the suit I was able to locate her and she seemed to be... hugging a door? Huuuh...

"Hey Akari, what are you doing?"

She jumped a bit startled but was able to regain her bearings in time to not make any noise.

"I was checking to see if there was someone on the other side. As sound is the only way to do it apparently... But I couldn't hear anything at all, not even footsteps."

"Ok... Anyways, we need to discuss what we found." I proceeded to tell her about the hallways and the storage room.

"Hmmm, let's hope those guards don't decide to suddenly start moving around. It would put us in a precarious situation. Also, it would be a good idea to investigate the storage room. Despite being of low importance it might contain something useful."

"That's was I thought too. Well, what did you find?"

"Ok, to start with the door we're in front of leads to _"Lab 2"_. It also requires a level 1 card to enter but as I said before, contrary to Lab 1, this one appears to be unoccupied. It is probably our only chance to sneak into a lab for now without the greater risks of going in blind."

"It would be a good way of getting some preliminary info about the experiments done around here."

"Apart from the lab there is the other door. The plaque above it indicated that it leads towards _"Level 2"_ and _"Break Room 1"_. The door does not have any card readers and it had enough space underneath it to slip in the camera so I did it. On the other side I saw a small hallway in which I spotted two doors, one which lead to what I presume is the break room and the the other that had a card reader and a guard stationed next to it which probably leads to _"Level 2"_. From this I can conclude that _"Level 1"_ means not only a clearance level but also a floor and as such a LVL 1 access card probably gives us a way to enter every locked room on this floor. Oh! I almost forgot, there was also a camera watching over the hallway."

"To go to the next level we'll probably need a distraction unless we find another way down..." It was good to know. If we had been unable to see what was behind the door going in blind would have gotten us caught for sure. "Now we need to decide what to do. The easiest would be entering this lab or the storage room, though someone would need to stay outside the lab to warn them of anyone coming in. We could also try to sneak past the two hallway guards but doing so would require more finesse and the mere fact that there're two of them makes it far more risky, maybe even too risky."

"Well, I doubt anyone is stationed inside the storage room so we can probably leave that for later but a lab is definitely not staying deserted forever. We should probably investigate it first in case whoever uses it comes back and we become unable to enter again."

"Indeed... Ok, that is what we're going to be doing. Akari you'll go inside while I stay here and watch for anyone. If I warn you of an intruder you get as close to the door as possible without getting in the way of it so you can make your escape."

"Are you sure? Shouldn't you go? You're better at information gathering than I am."

"I also happen to have the sharper senses between the two of us and as such I can minimize the danger by giving you a timely warning. I'm not willing to take risks with this operation, too much can go wrong and I would rather keep you safe."

Akari smiled at me and I guessed that she got the very obvious message.

"Ok, I'll do it. Unlock the door and I'll go in."

Pulling out the lock-picking device and the few extras needed for this kind of lock I put it to work on the card reader. After a tense minute of nothing but watching the machine and looking over our shoulders for problems the door finally unlocked. Brute forcing a security system is always dangerous but we were lucky that this device was able to make it without a hitch. The next few times would be swifter though still slower than having the card...

I smiled reassuringly at her. "Go, I'll make sure nothing happens to you."

She smiled and entered the room. Now to make sure no one interferes...

* * *

 _Well, remember what I said about schematics and stuff? I could publish the floor maps as the arc progresses if you want. They're pretty crude and I made them specifically for my own use but if enough people are interested I can polish and then publish them. With them you could actually see more or less how the floors are and eb less confused. Do tell me if you want them._


	18. Chapter 17 - Level 1 (Part 2)

_Hello everyone! New chapter here and as promised... the floor map!_

 **ricartelit deviantart com/art/Rockies-Lab-Floor-1-630596222**

 _Just add the dots where the spaces are and you should be golden. Fanfiction net's system really does not help. Alternatively if you don't want to write the link you have two options. One is to find this fanfic on the Archive of Our Own or AO3 for short. Same name, same author name and go to this chapter. There you'll be able to click the link. The other option is to search on deviantart for my username, and when you get there click gallery and then scraps. There you'll find the map._

 _Sorry for the inconvenience but you'll have to blame the website for that._

 _Anyways, I hope you like this chapter and I'll see you in the next one!_

 _P.S. Don't forget to review. Believe it or not, I read them all and I appreciate it. Thank you guys and gals._

* * *

 _-(December 29th - 9:50 PM)-_

 _._

 _-(Lab 2)-_

 _._

 **-Akari(P.O.V.) (in person)-**

The lab was not very different to what we saw before, the same usual equipment we saw in Paris. The true difference was the amount and the quality of it. It looked like the lab was capable of running maybe up to a dozen different experiments at the same time with all the instruments around here. They were on the walls, counters, desks, even the ceiling! And, from what I could see not being an expert and all, it was really high end equipment. Comparing this lab and the usual school lab would be like putting a wooden shack next to some billionaire's mansion. No wonder Yanagisawa could make such experiments, he was probably swimming in money!

After the awe from seeing the lab wore off I noticed that there was another door in the opposite side of the room and also... 1 security camera in the corner... Well I'll have to deal with that before anything else. It probably caught the door opening but as no alarm is going off no one must have noticed. I'll have to ask Ritsu to delete the footage when we get access to the facility's network. I pulled out my tablet and activated the little scrambler that was hooked up to it. It was a great idea to bring the tablet or I would have been screwed. The guards should be overconfident enough to only give a passing glance to the camera so they shouldn't see anything wrong.

With the lab's security no longer being a problem I could finally investigate. There were a few computers which most definitely will be good sources of information and there are also a few smallish archiving cabinets. It is a pretty low clearance lab so the chances of finding anything truly great are low but one has got to use all opportunities that present themselves to them. Seeing that the fastest way to get information would be the computers I decided to boot one of them up.

The computer turned on smoothly and no alarms were triggered to I sighed in relief. After a few seconds a login screen appeared, which in hindsight is something so obvious I should have seen it coming... Probably the awe from the lab still clouding my thoughts, let's go with that. I reached towards a small compartment inside the leg of the suit and pulled out a USB drive looking object. I wonder what happened to the one we left on the lab in Paris... probably fried. Inserting into the correct slot in the computer, after having to flip it twice, I contacted Ritsu.

"Hey Ritsu, do you mind dealing with this computer while I go check the rest of the lab?"

 _"No problem, I'll bypass the security and pull out any information we might want. Don't worry."_

"Thanks!"

Satisfied with that I went to investigate the rest of the lab. Apart from the equipment, archives and computers there were also a few shelves and storage compartments worth poking around in. I approached the closest shelf, one filled with various jars and boxes, and tried to see if I could identify anything. In the end it was all scientific gibberish. I could identify what the components were by name, but I had no idea of what they actually were made of or are used for. I took a few pictures for Ritsu to analyze later and went back to poking around the lab.

The closest thing was a small... cupboard? Is that how you call the ones in labs too? Whatever. Inside it were a few heavily sealed glass jars which appeared to contain... multicolored tentacles. I can't believe the amount of hues these tentacles can have. Most of them looked dead but there were a few that were, very disturbingly, moving around inside the jars. Taking a jar with me would never go unnoticed so I simply took a few more pictures and moved on.

I was about to go investigate the archives when Ritsu's voice sounded in my earpiece.

 _"Akari, Nagisa, I have finished copying everything I could from this computer. The good news is that it appears that there were a few good bits of information inside the files. The bad news is that the security is too high for me to connect to the network through here. You'll have to find the mainframe and connect there. I would appreciate if you could come grab the USB device and connect it to another computer."_

 _"Good job Akari, Ritsu. Keep going, there are no signs of anyone coming through for now."_ Nagisa's voice chimed in.

"Thanks. I'll be there in a second Ritsu."

I quickly went back to the computer and pulled out the gadget after turning the computer back off and plugged it to the computer closest to the last one, thankfully I only had to flip it once this time. I turned it on and let Ritsu do her magic.

 _"Thank you. I'll tell you when I need the device moved again."_

I nodded, before remembering that she couldn't see me. She probably got the idea anyways from the way my forehead's camera's view must have bobbed up and down.

With that done I went back to the archives.

When I said they were smallish I meant it. Compared to the ones in Paris, these ones were tiny. That and there were at most 6 throughout the entire lab. At least it would be less work for me to do.

Knowing that I had little time to play around I started carefully grabbing the files one by one from the cabinets and scanning them with the tablet. It is a time consuming process but it has to be done. Pick up a file, spend time scanning file, carefully place file back where it was, rinse and repeat. I almost finishing up with the third cabinet, after having switched the gadget to another computer once, when I heard Nagisa's voice, no more than a whisper but still sounding very alarmed.

 _"Akari! Get out of there! There are two men in lab coats making their way towards the lab."_

I quickly put the file I was holding back into the cabinet and hid the tablet inside the suit. Looking around, I remembered Ritsu's gadget so I ran towards the computer. Thank god the door were mostly soundproof. The moment I picked the USB device I heard the door opening. Quickly I dropped and hugged the ground in order to camouflage. As the door was opening I crawled towards the wall next to it.

The youngest of the two men who came in, or at least who I guessed was the youngest, looked like he was in his early thirties while the oldest one couldn't be older than forty, they looked pretty normal, all things considered. Black and brown hair, one tall and the other medium-sized, both wearing lab coats and work pants beneath. Just like any regular scientist. The mad scientist stereotype is really ridiculously exaggerated.

Noticing that I didn't have much time until they closed the door I quickly moved towards it and while they were busy talking to each other with their backs to the door I slipped through. They turned back and closed the door 10 seconds later. A little more and I would have been stuck...

I was taking a few deep breaths when I felt something touch my shoulder and I stifled a scream and, startled, turned towards whoever poked me.

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari (in person)-**

The moment I saw the two men approaching I started panicking. What if Akari couldn't make it? What if she got stuck? What if she got caught? What would I do?!

I quickly relayed the information back to her and hoped that she could make it through. In the end my worries were unfounded as she came through the door safe and sound and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Thank goodness she was ok, I have no idea what I would do without her... As she was there getting her breath back as the door closed I went up to her and poked her in the shoulder to call her attention, though I'm pretty sure I startled her as she let out a small gasp and whirled around far too quickly to be any good for her balance. She almost fell on the ground but I managed to catch her before she face planted.

"Don't scare me like that! Are you insane?!" she whispered a bit histerically.

Oops, I really didn't mean to scare her so much. "Sorry, I didn't think. I'm just glad that you're ok."

Her stance softened a bit and I could see the tension leaving her body.

"Ok, just don't so it again. If I ended up screaming in the middle of the hallway we would be in major trouble."

"I'll be more careful." I told her. "Did you find anything worth mentioning in the lab?" She shook her head. "Ok, then now we need to make our way to the storage room, it's the only other option we have for now, though I doubt we'll find anything useful in there."

She nodded and we sneaked towards the previously mentioned room.

We watched around for any people, opened the door and stepped inside.

It was not a very big room. As said in the door it was of low importance so I did not expect anything else. I could see a few boxes with what could only be spare guard uniforms and lab coats, a few other boxes that contained the normal lab equipment spares, some boxes with food and drinks, something that could be oil and other fluids which we could not identify. All in all, pretty underwhelming. The uniforms were useless for us as we're far too young and far too small to be able to disguise as guards, the lab equipment could be useful to distract someone but apart from that it's far too cumbersome to carry around, the food and drinks would be good if we stay here longer than planned, actually we took a bottle of water each in case of necessity, and finally I don't even want to try anything with fluids I can not identify. This was a pretty useless room but what can you do, we can't win them all.

"Well, this was a waste of time. Apart form the water I mean. I was pretty thirsty." Akari remarked.

"Yup, if only we were a bit taller... But even then the guards must know each other so it would be useless." I added. "Well anyways, let's get out of this room. We need to decide what to do next."

As we were walking towards the door we started hearing footsteps outside and quickly hid ourselves. The door wasn't opened and we could hear the footsteps fading in the direction from where we came from and the sound of a door being opened.

Carefully we used the flexible camera to make sure nobody was on the other side and opened the door.

The hallway was again empty so we felt a little relieved. Seeing the next hallway as the only other option to go any further as the one that lead to Level 2 would be undoubtedly far too well guarded we went to the corner of the junction between the two hallways to check if anyone was there. Where previously were two guards now stood just one who seemed to be bored out of his skull guarding what I deduced before to be the entrance. Though I felt like I was forgetting something... Oh damn the camera! We're in it's field of vision!

"Akari we need to get out of here, I forgot about the camera, it's a miracle the alarm hasn't sounded yet."

"Oh... I think I forgot to deactivate the camera signal scrambler..."

I could only stare at her. For once, forgetting to do something might have saved our lives.

I started rambling a bit as the panic dimmed. "Oh thank goodness. I was so scared we would be caught. Oh goodness, what if you were caught. It would have been my fau-"

I felt her arms embrace me. "Come on, don't worry. We're ok. I'm ok and I'm not going anywhere."

"Thanks. I needed that."

Having calmed down we discussed for a bit what we would have to do. Seeing as the guard was a bit isolated and not looking in our direction we decided to sneak up on him and see if he had a security card. Then we would have easier access to the door.

Being cautious to move slowly and hugging the wall, with the scrambler working to prevent the camera from seeing us we made our way towards the guard. As we approached him we reached the T junction between the entrance hallway and the hallway we had yet to check out. From where we were we could see 2 doors which Akari guessed that lead to the labs and 1 massive gate that we had no idea where it lead to. It must have been important though as there was 1 camera facing it and a guard posted next to it. Both the doors and the gate had a card reader next to them. We continued on our way towards the guard, being even more careful so as to not alarm the one guarding the gate.

When we reached the guard Akari pulled out the dart gun and loaded it with a disorientating dart. Aiming at his neck she fired and hit him. At first it seemed like nothing was happening but as we moved closer we could see that he was swaying and looked unfocused like he was distracted with something we couldn't see. Carefully we pushed him a bit more out of view of the other guard using his current state to our advantage and we searched his pockets. I was giving up hope when Akari pulled out a small black card with red stripes and the words _"LEVEL 1 CLEARANCE"_ on it. Having gotten what we wanted we quickly made sure that he was as we first saw him so he wouldn't suspect anything happening and made our way to the little door on the hallway. Above the door were the words _"Storage Closet 1"_ so we quickly entered just as the effect of the poison seemed to run out and the guard's focus came back to reality. We would have stayed to see his confusion if it weren't for the fact that we could be caught.

Akari was beaming. "We did it! We actually did it. We got the card right from under his nose. Let's just hope he doesn't figure out that he has been robbed."

"And if he does it would be best if he thought he lost it." I added. "Well, at least this was successful. Now what should we do next?"

We contacted Ritsu once again and started planning.


	19. Chapter 18 - Descent into Floor 2

_Hello! Really late chapter... sorry. Laziness added to lack of inspiration tends to screw up my writing. But I've managed to overcome the procrastination and bring you a new chapter._

 _With this chapter come a brand new floor map:_

 _ricartelit deviantart com/art/Rockies-Floor-2-633964169_

 _Just add the dots to the spaces or follow the method I wrote in the last chapter._

 _Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and do remember to review! :P_

* * *

 _-(December 29th - 11:20 PM)-_

 _._

 _-(Storage Closet 1)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari (in person)-**

After having just narrowly got into the closet on time before the guard could take notice of us we took a minute to rest and then contacted Ritsu and Karma to decide what our next move should be.

"So, we have now got the security card. With it we should be able to bypass all those readers and directly enter any room on this floor, at least in theory. The next step is figuring out if we should further explore this floor or go find a way to go down."

Having asked my question I waited for everyone else's response.

"Hmmmm, this is the first floor and from what I've seen in the lab, despite the tentacles and other things, there was not much of useful so this is all very low clearance. Considering this, staying in this floor would probably be useless. It would be far better to progress and try to find something on the floor below."

Akari's point was a good one. One lab being of little use would probably mean that the other would also be of little relevance.

 _"While Akari's point is good there is a probability of something unique being stored or studied in the lab you have yet to visit. It could lead us to a breakthrough and allow us to possess more information on Yanagisawa's experimentation."_

I nodded, it was indeed a very good point. Akari though was having none of it.

"Ritsu, the lab is far too close to the entrance for anything of high importance to be stored there. The time that I used to explore "Lab 2" would make any gains probably irrelevant. And that was without being able to fully investigate everything. Every second Nagisa or I spend inside a lab increases the chance of us being found. The risk is simply not worth it."

Remembering how close Akari was to being detected swayed me to her side.

"I agree with Akari's opinion. Nothing of great could be gained from exploring "Lab 1" versus the risk we could have while doing it. We explored "Lab 2" because, as luck would have it, the scientists were not inside and it gave us the perfect opportunity for preliminary investigation which, as stated before, almost got us caught. It would be far better to just go for the floor below and see if we have any luck there."

Ritsu probably noticed that we wouldn't be swayed as she easily gave in. _"Very well. If that is the final decision then our next step should be to figure out HOW to go down."_

We started putting out ideas in the hope of coming up with something.

"Hmm, we could set a fire and stage it as an accident to draw the guards there and thus clear the way for us." I said.

 _"Hey guys."_

 _"That method has a low probability of success. Most likely other guards besides the one you want to draw out would go to extinguish the fire."_

I tried another idea. "Hmmm, we could shoot the guard with a nausea dart in order to make him leave his post."

 _"Guys."_

"No. How would we shoot him through the door? If we opened it he would see us and despite wanting to vomit he would warn someone. Then we would have to run."

I was not having any luck with ideas.

 _"You could combine both of Nagisa's ideas and with some luck be successful. Before we heard a guar move somewhere else. By the sound of his footsteps he probably went past the door leading towards the next floor and towards the break room. He is probably inside it right now. By setting a fire you would draw the guard who is obviously not on guard duty to investigate and when he opened the door if you are quick enough you could shoot the dart at the other guard. That way, while one is busy the other will have to leave his post giving you an opportunity to slip past him and go downstairs."_

 _"Guys!"_

Both Akari and I were surprised at the idea.

"Huh, didn't think of that, we could indeed use that method. It heavily depends on our luck and aim but I don't see any other options."

"Yup, it's a really good idea. This way we should be able to proceed."

 ** _"Could you please pay attention to me?!"_** Karma's voice boomed.

"Oh, hey Karma, we didn't hear you."

Karma's facepalm was very audible.

 _"While you were all coming up with overcomplicated and risky ideas I thought about the very obvious method you could use to go down."_

That sounded promising.

"What method is that?"

 _"Can you seriously not guess it?"_

Karma's statement a silence afterwards was making us feel a bit stupid...

Akari was the first one to get fed up.

"No we can't. Just tell us Karma!"

 _"The very way you used to get in. The air ducts. How could you have forgotten that?!"_

"..."

"..."

"..."

Oh.

That made me feel incredibly stupid.

Akari spoke up again.

"Wait. If you knew that, then why didn't you tell us right after I made it out of the lab?!"

 _"You still had to visit the storage room and besides, you were all pretty excited to get the card which could indeed be very useful later on. You never know when a security card could help."_

That was a good point.

"Well, let's just get on with it and do it.

Making sure to check the outside with out camera and then turning on the scrambler we carefully opened the door in order not to alert the guard. Using the camouflage we slipped outside, closing the door in the process and sneakily made our way to the storage closet we first entered.

In there we resupplied, which consisted of me getting 1 dart to replace the one I used and pocketing some of the explosives while Akari got one of the toolkits.

We looked over what we had on us, hid the bags again and went into the duct.

.

 _-(Storage Room - Floor 2)-_

 _._

 **-Same P.O.V.-**

We made our way through the ducts, disabling turbines when needed, and passed above various rooms. We even saw the break room inside of which there were actually 2 guards. Our plan would have completely failed...

Eventually we found a vent that lead down further into the facility so we went through it. On what we could only guess was Floor 2 we found various rooms. One which we could guess was a second break room, a lab which looked far better than the ones above, an open area between some rooms with a pillar in the centre, a room filled with what we could only hope were servers. All those rooms had people or were obviously guarded though. The last room though, from what we could see, would allow us to enter Floor 2 undetected. At first glance it looked to be another storage room but only if we made it inside would we be sure.

Akari used the toolkit to open the vent and we made our way inside the room.

Yup, it was most definitely a storage room. There were loads of crates and boxes wither on shelves or just pilled around on the floor. The room was slightly bigger than the other one and there weren't any cameras inside. The only legitimate entrances were two doors on opposite sides.

Having checked around the room to make sure we were safe we had to decide what to do next.

In the end it was a pretty short conversation which led us to control the urge to snoop around the boxes in order to use our camera to investigate the outside of the room. Making sure the outside was also safe was higher on our priorities than our curiosity.

We made our way to one of the doors and slipped the camera beneath it.

Soon an image appeared on the tablet and we made sure to memorize what we saw. It seemed to be the open area we had seen before. In the middle the pillar stood, probably to support the weight of the mountain above, though there looked like there was a little machine inside it. We were unable to see what it was though. Apart from that we could see another enormous gate on the wall next to the one our door was in and on the wall opposite there was another door. An opening to an hallway was a bit farther on the opposite wall and on the same side as our door the open area had continuation but we were unable to see anything about it. Next to both the door and the gate were card readers and in one of the corners of the open area, next to the gate's card reader there was a guard. This was not a door we could exit through. We had no good way of avoiding the guard and who knows what lays behind the pillar.

Seeing that it would be useless to dally around on this door any longer we retracted the camera and made our way to the other door. We did the same thing as before and watched.

This door was more promising. It lead to a small hallway in which we could see a door, a camera and a turn turn to another hallways. The camera wasn't even pointed in our direction! We instantly decided that this would be the way we would exit the room.

With our exit secured we could finally see what was inside the boxes.

We scavenged around for quite a while and we found a number of interesting things. This room being located on Floor 2 naturally had more important items than the previous one. We found a lot of lab equipment of all sizes inside the crates, from normal equipment like centrifuges and heaters to machines we could not identify, this room appeared to have it all. There were also a few vials and other containers but we had seen that already on Floor 1. We could see a few boxes with spare computer parts, probably to repair the servers or any of the lab computers, nothing we could use though from that as none of them looked used. The broken parts were probably destroyed for security reasons. Surprisingly there was some basic security equipment in some of the crates too. Nothing lethal, just some tasers, stun batons, flashlights and some bullet-proof vests. From these we took a taser each and Akari took a flashlight. They would be very useful. We did not have much space for the batons though, as great as it would be to have them. Apart from that and the odd miscellaneous things stores here, there was also food and drinks just like in Floor 1. I guess they like to keep themselves stocked up with essentials.

With our little scavenging out of the way, it was time to start exploring Floor 2.

We made our way to the chosen door and opened it, stepping into the hallway that lay beyond.


	20. Chapter 19 - Full Access

_Hello!_

 _Sorry for the massive delay but with the start of school it becomes harder and harder to find both the time and motivation to fit in between all the classes and personal life._

 _One of the greatest problems is that I have loads of ideas and plot points I wanted to explore but they can't be inserted in the story yet and the itch to write them makes it so anything else becomes less appealing. As a solution, I decided that foreshadowing would be enough to sate that itch for now._

 _I hope you like this chapter and especially the little fun bit I included, it will lead to one of the major plot points._

 _See ya next chapter!_

* * *

 _-(December 30th - 00:20 AM)-_

 _._

 _-(Hallway)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari (in person)-**

As we saw before, this was a pretty small hallway. Upon leaving the storage room we hugged the walls and moving around, making our way towards the door first. It was labeled as "Break Room", so it was pretty self-explanatory. It also meant that there was no way we would go in there, it would be suicidal. Seeing as our only option was the adjacent hallway we walked towards the corner where the two connected.

Carefully we looked peeked around the corner, making sure the scrambler was on in case the camera caught us, and took in what we saw. The hallway lead to that open space we saw before, something obvious because of the pillar we saw in the end of it, but that was not the most interesting. What truly interested us was the door which had both a card reader and a guard in front of it. That made whatever room was behind the door important, and with what we saw in the vents, there was a good chance of it being the server room. This possibility made us very eager to get inside of it and after a brief discussion we decided on the best course of action.

I loaded a nausea dart in the gun and took aim. The guard was moving a bit at first so I was unable to guarantee an accurate shot but after a few minutes he appeared to have settled down. Using that opportunity, I took the shot. At first nothing seemed to have happened, besides the guard rubbing his neck, but after a while he started swaying a bit, then he became a bit green and finally after a two minutes he looked like he couldn't hold it anymore and went running towards us. We started panicking, but he simply went past us towards the break room. Letting out a breath of relief at how close that was, we sneaked towards the door, being careful not to be spotted by anyone else, though we did notice with glee that the door was labeled "Server Room". When we got there I instantly got to work and hooked up the lock-picking device to the card reader. It would take a bit for the lock to be cracked and with us being unable to disguise the device, we wanted to make sure nobody saw us, which would be hard considering that it wouldn't take very long for another guard to come watch the door. We waited, nervous, every second seemed like an entire minute. Eventually the device clicked and the door was openable. Not waiting for anything else, I removed the device and we both entered the room. And just on time as well, because heard a door opening from the direction of the break room.

The inside of the room was dark and uncomfortably warm. The machines must produce a lot of heat and, guessing by the amount of vents in the room, it must be pumped around the facility in order to keep the temperature somewhat comfortable. I had wondered how they kept this place heated... Anyways, there were a lot, and by that I mean a LOT of servers inside, they almost covered the entire room. There was also one camera we could see on the right corner after we entered the room, though it doesn't matter much with the scrambler activated. We doubted anyone would be inside such an uncomfortable room 24/7 but just to be sure we made a sweep throughout the entirety of it and we only ended up finding one more camera. Nothing special. Knowing that there would be little chance of being threatened we got to work and chose a relatively hidden machine to hook up the device Ritsu gave us and then gave her the OK.

 _"The security of this network is definitely far higher than the previous lab but I should still be able to crack it. It will take me a while though so you'll have to wait."_

Knowing that we sat down and took a sip of our water, being careful not to spill anywhere, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And finally, Ritsu managed to do it. When we asked the time, only 10 minutes had passed. Huh, it seemed much longer than that.

 _"I'm now able to see and access the entire facility. You two should be able to see the cameras' points of view through the tablet."_

"Great, let's see what this facility hides." I said with renewed vigor.

We cycled through the cameras. The access to the entire facility really gave us an entirely new perspective. We finally managed to get an accurate count of the staff inside the facility, 5 guards on the first floor and 4 scientists, 5 guards on the second floor with 3 scientists and 7 guards on the third floor and the same number of scientists for a grand total of 31 staff. The first floor was mostly the same as we though as we had seen almost everything, apart from the big gate which we now discovered was a massive cargo elevator. The second floor was also mostly the same as our expectation, from what we saw from the vents and from under the door we got most of the picture, apart from the discovery that inside the pillar there was a motion sensor and the better view from the lab room which was quite a bit more advanced than the two previous ones. The third floor was what really interested was another open space like in this floor with it's own motion sensor/pillar in the middle. Said space connected directly to a card reader-protected storage room and the elevator. It also lead to two hallways on opposite sides, one which lead to the second floor and to a room which appeared to be a physical archive room, and the other which lead to our objective. Behind the only door in that hallway was a lab, but that was not the most important thing... Inside the lab was a giant, transparent cage. It looked like it could be detached and moved somewhere else and as interesting as that was, the creature inside, Subject 02 I suppose, was far more interesting...

Inside the cage stood a tall being, taller than any normal human by about... two meters, give or take? Unlike the previous one, this one didn't look wounded at all, on the contrary, it looked... what would be the word? Stabilized? Yes, stabilized. Probably from the advances in their research they managed to make it so the antimatter did not react so badly with the person in with which it was melded. It did not look at all like Korosensei though. It still had patches that were very easily identifiable as human like the right half of his (hers maybe, that lump could be a breast) torso, the left hand, the top half of the left leg and the mouth and eyes. Apart from that everything was made of the same matter as Korosensei was, though in a deep red colour. Unlike sensei's colour changes, this one seemed to be it's permanent colour. The creature just stood in what looked to be a daze in one of the corners of the cage seemingly muttering to itself continuously, all the while scientists occasionally came closer to the cage to observe or poked and prodded it with tools through the few holes. It just looked... pitiful. Unlike the other one which made me feel absolute terror while looking at it, this one just made me feel sad and pity whoever the victim was, to be turned into such a mess, a simple guinea pig.

Inside the lab were guards to make sure nothing happened and the seven scientists working continuously. While looking at the scene neither me nor Akari had any idea of how to get inside without being caught, and from Karma's and Ritsu's silence when I posed the question I doubt they know either. We continued cycling through the various cameras and planning the rest of the infiltration when Ritsu spoke up.

 _"I have a solution for our problem in the subject's lab. With my newly gained control of many of the facility's systems I am able to cause disruptions and chaos if necessary. With the right encouragements I might be able to trigger an evacuation and then you should be able to go in undetected. Though you'll have to be quick as I doubt the ruse would keep them busy for very long before they guess what is happening."_

"First we have to get down there at all for that idea to have any chance of success. Is there anything else we need to visit personally on this floor before proceeding downwards?" Akari's question was indeed a pertinent one.

 _"The only other room of interest would be the lab, of which I can get all information through the network so there is no need to actually go there, not considering the fact that getting inside it would be pretty hard when it is that guarded and the scientists are also inside."_

"So not only would we get little of interest, we would also be in great danger... Yeah, no. It is better to go down. Vents again?"

Akari nodded. "Yup, it's the best option, and with Ritsu now being inside the network she should be able to deactivate the turbines herself so we shouldn't need to blow up anything else."

With that in mind we walked towards the door and were about to open it when Karma's voice stopped us.

 _"Don't! There's a guard on the other side of the door. If you try to go out you'll be caught."_

My hand reeled back from the door as if burned. We almost screwed up the entire operation because we were careless and distracted! We can't afford to relax too much and commit such rookie mistakes.

"Thanks Karma, you're a life saver." I thanked him grateful.

 _"No problem, that's what friends are for, just be more careful."_

"Will be. So... What do we do now?"

 _"Why are you always overcomplicating things?! The storage room may have vents, but so does every other room in this damn facility. Just climb into one of the vents in the room you're currently in. You even have the toolkit you used to open the storage room vent! With Ritsu's guidance now you'll have an even easier time of choosing which one is better and making your way to the third floor. "_

A bit embarrassed by our blunder we asked Ritsu for help and with the choice made we made our way to the chosen vent, opened it and climbed inside. The last leg of this journey awaits us. And we had no idea of the mysteries that would show themselves and the challenges we would face...

.

 _-(? ?, ?:?)-_

 _._

 _-(?)-_

 _._

 **-?-**

For months surrounded by these damn walls (do they even exist? I don't see them but they block me). Months being poked, prodded, bruised, beaten, **stabbed** , by these... these... people? Not sure. Not sure anymore. Not sure of many things anymore... Not sure of day. Not sure of hour. Not sure of where, why, when... Not sure of who... Not sure of me? Not sure...

With all the time, with all the changes, with all **they** did... Now only sure of one thing... Disappointment. Not mine... Their's. I failed them. I failed them, I failed them, **Ifailed** _them_!

I was supposed to help. Help. To make it all better. To protect the _Organization_. To make nobody hurt again.

But now I hurt. I hurt, **Ihurtsomuch**!

I want help. Help? What is help. Not sure... Not sure of many things anymore.

I just wish it would all end...


	21. Chapter 20 - Decisions and Endings

_Hello everyone._

 _I apologize for the enormous delay. I just did not have the drive to write until now._

 _I do not expect to update as often as when I first started but I hope not to create such massive interruptions again._

 _Anyways, I hope you like the chapter and I'll see you next time!_

 _Also, here's the map for the third floor:_

 _ricartelit deviantart com/art/Rockies-Floor-3-679229600_

 _Just add the dots._

* * *

 _-(December 30th - 1:00 AM)-_

.

 _-(3rd Floor Storage Room)-_

.

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.) & Akari (in person)-**

With Ritsu's control over the facility's electronics we were capable to easily crawl around the vents towards Floor 3. Through her guidance we managed to make our way to our first chosen destination: the special high clearance storage room. We hoped to get an idea of what exactly was being done in this facility besides the obvious antimatter experimentation.

We carefully moved around, inspecting each and every machine, tool and sample stored inside. There were many things we could not divine the purpose of, like a strange hook like tool which when turned on seemed to emit a strange frequency, barely audible to the human ear but quite uncomfortable, or a big machine with several... input? ports which seemed destined for some of the liquid containers stored around us. All in all, pretty lackluster considering our lack of knowledge. Ritsu might be able to shed some light on it later. Apart from that we just found the usual antimatter injections with the corresponding injector machine, semi-recognizable measuring devices and a mountain of other little things which were of little consequence.

I looked at Akari and with a nod of agreement we moved back towards the vent, being careful to put everything back as it was before.

"So, what should we go next?" I asked, hoping Ritsu could give us advice about our next goal.

 _"Considering the fact that in order to reach Subject 02's containment area we will need to cause chaos with the knowledge that they will eventually become aware of the infiltration, you should deal with the archives before attempting it. I'll guide you through the vents and fool the camera inside. Do be careful though, there is a guard right next to the door on the outside."_

"Thanks. We're moving towards it. talk to you again when we get there."

.

 _-(Physical Archives)-_

.

We quickly arrived at a big room filled with safes embedded in the walls. Everyone labelled in ways neither of us could understand like "Experiment log 02-45X" or "Incident report G05-C03". Deciding that Ritsu probably had a better idea Akari spoke up.

"Hey Ritsu, do you have any way of understanding this file sorting method?"

 _"With access to the mainframe, I do. Want me to explain, or to just point you towards the most advantageous ones to investigate?"_

"A bit of both, I'm curious about the way they do things here. Might be useful for future reference."

 _"Ok. First things first, there's the obvious, the words describe what kind of files are stored inside. Nothing hard in there. Then comes the first number/letter mashup, it refers to the individual the files pertain to. Just numbers means an experimental subject, G means a guard, S a scientist and O some other random individual. The second code is where it differs between file types. For example, in incident reports the letter has to do with the danger/damage associated to the event, which ranges from E to S in ascending order of danger, while the number just grows with the number of incidents. The experiment logs are different though, the number is the same thing as the incident reports but the letters mean something different, X means physical interaction/experimentation with the subject, Y means psychological experimentation/attempt to communicate and I pertains to injection or exposure to different chemicals." Nothing else matters much in these files. Try to dig up as much as possible from the incidents related to Subject 02 and as varied a sample as possible of all different types of experiment logs. That would be the best way to efficiently use the time we have."_

Karma spoke up too, worried. _"Be extra careful. The more I hear about this the more fearful I become of what would happen if you two were caught."_

Akari smiled at that. "Thank you Karma, don't worry we'll manage to do this and get out quickly!"

I too added my own two cents. "Indeed, we'll make it out safe and sound. Thank you too Ritsu for the explanation."

Ritsu's avatar smiled. _"You're very welcome."_

With the plan decided Akari and I started to unlock the safes and scanning as many files as possible, making sure to read a bit of them ourselves. After a good 45 minutes of doing the same thing over and over again we had amassed a good amount of information and a whole new idea of the horror of Yanagisawa's experiments. The things done to the person who used to be Subject 02 are unspeakable, from what could be considered repeated physical torture, to emotional manipulation, and the horrible concoctions injected into him/her... No wonder it tried to escape so many times.

There was also an interesting tidbit of information that jumped to my attention due to how often it appeared. Subject 02 was often associated with something they called the "Organization". Any other details were always censored but it appears as if the subject wasn't kidnapped by coincidence... Much like the God of Death... They wanted him/her for some reason, either personal of experiment-related. It would be useful to investigate further into the role of this "Organization" in the bigger scheme of things.

Sobered by all our discoveries we made our way back to the vents while talking to our friends outside.

"The only remaining goal is the subject itself. It should be time for your distraction Ritsu."

 _"Right, you still have a few of the little explosives don't you Nagisa?"_

"Yes, two or three, why?"

 _"Ok, good. Do what I tell you. Crawl to the vent in the stairway between Floor two and three. Once there I'll instruct you to plant two of the explosives in specific locations on the wall. Wire the little receiver to my frequency."_

"Very well, what do I do after I finish planting them?"

 _"You'll rendezvous with Akari in the vent, right next to the Main Lab."_

I joked a bit to clear the previous somber mood. "Instructions received! Will proceed to target location."

Akari giggled a bit so I counted that one as a victory.

We moved towards our objectives, Akari directly towards the lab and I to do what Ritsu told me.

We squeezed each other's hands for a bit before separating.

.

 _-(Vent - Main Lab)-_

.

It had taken 10 minutes to finish the placement of the little bombs and another 5 to meet up with Akari, we were now waiting for Ritsu to do whatever it was she planned on doing.

 _"Everything is ready, prepare to move quickly once the chaos settles. This is the only chance you'll get."_

"We're ready, do it!"

And the loudspeakers inside the walls of the facility started blaring.

.

 **-General P.O.V.-**

A loud warning sounded throughout the third floor of the facility, surprising all the occupants and causing many of them to stumble.

 ** _"Warning. Toxic Gas leak on the third floor. All personnel are to evacuate the third floor in an orderly fashion. Those on duty in the main lab are to secure Subject 02 and escape along with all other staff."_**

The words kept repeating, causing all employees to start evacuating according to the orders given. Scientists first, after following the correct procedure to ensure Subject 02 wouldn't escape with the chaos, then guards taking the rear.

They were approaching the stairway when the sounds of an explosion reverberated throughout the stairs. The ones in the lead could see a continuous gout of flame blocking the way upwards. With the stairs inaccessible and the looming danger of the toxins, they all decided to take the bigger risk and use the giant cargo elevator.

Using the right security clearance card they made their way inside and activated it. The elevator started ascending and it seemed as if their misfortunes had ended. As always, life does not agree. All the lights went out and the ascension stopped. It elevator was unresponsive. No probing from the personnel managed to get it to continue moving. They were trapped.

.

 **-Nagisa & Akari(P.O.V.)-**

Ritsu's distraction seemed to be working, though we were still waiting for her signal to move out. I hoped it all went well.

 _"The stairway is now blocked and the staff trapped in a paralyzed elevator. You're free to move out. I'll disable all cameras. At this point there is no need for subtlety."_

"How did you do it?"

 _"There was a gas pipe inside the stairway's walls. I simply detonated the explosives to set it aflame. The rest was simply a matter of disabling the electronics."_

We quickly opened the vent and dropped into the lab. It was quite an unnerving sight. So many machines, all of them obviously used to poke and prod at the creature who stood miserably hunched in a corner of the glass-like cage situated in the center of the room. It was truly different from the lab in Paris... At least Nagisa wasn't likely to have a panic attack in this one.

I hooked one of the "wireless Ritsu" devices to the lab's main computer and let her do her work while Nagisa and I investigated the subject.

We both approached it cautiously. The cage did not appear to have any holes apart from tiny ones made for breathing purposes and what looked like open-able entrances fro researchers and machines. We neared the corner where the creature was huddled from the outside of the cage. As we approached we started hearing it's ramblings. At first it seemed like senseless mutterings from someone long driven insane but the closer we got the more we understood. It ranged from things like "I failed" and "Please forgive me" to "Make it go away!" "End it, please end it.". Whoever the subject used to be, it seemed like it was long driven to insanity. It's tortured voice sounded so... lonely, so... desperate.

I looked at Nagisa which prompted him to do the same to me. I could see the sad look in his eyes and I bet he could do the same in mine. It was just too pitiful. To be driven to such extremes.

"So... what should we do?" I asked, a bit hesitantly.

"I think we should do what it wants, to free it. To leave it like this would be torture. No one deserves this."

From the way he spoke, I knew he wasn't speaking about letting it roam free.

"By freeing it, you mean...?

"Yes." He answered, somber.

The moment he said that I steeled my resolve and made a decision.

"You took the burden for us last time. I won't let you do so again. I will share it with you."

"B-but-"

"No! I have decided. Nothing you say will make me go back on my choice."

He was going to try and convince me otherwise again but a look at my eyes was enough for him to give in. "I-I... Ok. I'll be here for you if need me after. You know that right?"

I couldn't help but smile at his words.

"I do. Thank you."

He handed me the little gun, loaded with the lethal dart.

"Ritsu, open the door to the cage."

 _"Ok. Be safe Akari."_

The door slowly opened, though there was little reaction from the subject. Taking a deep breath I made my way in.

Now standing right next to it I could see it even better. I could understand better the atrocities done in the name of science. Yanagisawa's science. Seeing this made my desire to see this entire project through even bigger. We would not fail. We would end this and make him pay.

I take another breath and lift the gun, pointing it at the human part of the creature. It wasn't a perfect meld between antimatter and person so it should still die to the poison. With only a moment of hesitation I shot.

The dart hit and emptied it's contents. For a few seconds nothing happened and I feared I had failed, that maybe the poison did not work. My worries were cleared as the subject stopped moving completely, with no more ramblings but what I believe was a last "Thank you" before passing away.

I had done it... I killed it. I killed another living being... No matter how much of a mercy it was, it still left a bitter taste in my mouth. It's too bad it was an imperfect meld or Okuda's cure would probably have worked. Well... I could deal with my feelings later. Right now we had to leave.

I turned to Nagisa.

"Let's go, we have to leave" I told him, tonelessly. I guess I'm too spent for emotions...

"Are you-"

"Later." Yes, later. Right now wasn't a good time to get distracted

"Ok, later then." He agreed with only a moment of hesitation.

We quickly made our way into the vents. We had to escape quickly, they would soon get the elevator working again.

Nagisa went to the storage closet on the first floor to grab what we left behind while I made my way to the exit directly, where I waited for him for about 10 minutes. The moment he arrived we departed, hiding in the vegetation, towards the vehicle we used to get here. The guards were frantic, they obviously already knew there was an intruder, but we managed to evade detection. With our hearts and minds a little heavier we drove to the motel.

.

 _-(As Akari entered the cage)-_

.

 **-?-**

It hurts, it **hurts,** _**it hurts!**_

Pleas- huh? There is something new? What is new? Is it person? Is it more pain?

It moves... maybe person. But some pain also moves...

It is near me (what is me?). It has pain looking thingy in hand. _**Please no more pain.**_

I feel little pain and- huh? I... what is this... I feel sluggish. I- I remember. I remember who I am...

The girl... She isn't one of that **monster's** people...

Was it mercy?

No matter... I can now rest. Finally it will end.

Only one thing left to do.

"Thank you."

And I embraced the void.


	22. Chapter 21 - Comfort and Vermin

_Hello all! Welcome back to my story._

 _I hope you like feels cause you'll board the feels train on this chapter._

 _And what might our favourite vermin be hiding, I wonder._

 _I hope you enjoy it! Have fun._

* * *

 _-(December 30th - Morning, approximately 6:00 AM)-_

 _._

 _-(Motel room)-_

 _._

 **-Nagisa(P.O.V.), Akari, Karma & Ritsu-**

We got to the motel when the sky was still dark. Perks of doing this in Winter, I guess. I drove the 3 hours from the lab to here despite Akari's insistence that she wanted to do it. No matter how much it would have distracted her from what she was thinking I refused to risk an accident due to her mental state. The last thing she needs is more guilt... It was a... somber trip. Barely any words exchanged, no music, the darkness of the world around us, all in all not a very good ambient for relaxation.

The first thing we did as we neared the motel was dispose of the vehicle. A nice little off the road ditch served for that purpose. Then we got back to the room. We ditched our bags onto the floor and threw ourselves on top of one of the beds. This mission was less than pleasant...

A small cough broke us out of our stupor. "Hey, you don't even bother to say hello?" If glares could kill, I'm sure Akari would have murdered Karma ten times over.

I decided to intervene before anything happened. "We're not really in the mood for that. Just let us have a moment for ourselves. We'll discuss everything afterwards."

"But we... Fine. Have it your way." I'm sure Karma wanted to say something but I guess even his young self can read people well enough to understand when not to press too hard.

I turned to Akari. She looked... frail and yet, not. So contradictory. It's like she fears something enough to paralyze her and yet she has the will to keep on moving. Her hands are so tightened that her knuckles are turning white, I hope she doesn't injure herself, and her face looks conflicted. I have gotten good enough at reading emotions to see pain intermixed with resignation, anger, determination and, worse of all, self-loathing. That is... the one emotion I hoped she wouldn't have to feel. What I wanted to protect her from... I know I can't shield her from all, especially because she is by far not a damsel in distress, but even then, no one wants to see the ones they love in pain.

I wrapped my arms around her and she flinched a little before relaxing. At least she isn't pushing me away. I whispered to her:

"It's ok. You know I would never push you away. Now, can we have that talk?"

"I... Maybe. I don't want to. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke... I don't think I can..." She was starting to panic and trying to squirm away so I relaxed my hold on her a bit and continued whispering:

"Shhhh, calm down. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Slowly." I waited until she settled down a bit. "Yes, like that. Focus on your breathing and on your heartbeat. Just focus on them, nothing more." She started to become calmer. "Now slowly relax your muscles, all of them. Good, you're doing fantastic."  
In the end she managed to contain the incoming panic attack.

"Thank you, Nagisa. I feel much better now."

"Well, I learned from the best, even if not on the best of conditions. But that's not important right now. Are you ok for that now?"

She looked at me worriedly for a moment before relaxing again. My problems are still not fully fixed, they might never be, but right now this is for her.

"I think so. What exactly do you want to speak about?"

"Just the average. Are you going to be ok, do you want to say anything about what happened, can I help you in any way..."

"I think I should be ok. Eventually. But I just, I can't, why did I have to do that? No, I know what you're going to say. What I meant is why did that have to happen at all? The world is so unfair. Did you look at, at, at... I can't refer to that person as an it! It was living human being that the worm just casually perverted into an abomination! Why did that have to happen?! Why are the governments so blind? But are they really? And if they aren't, why are they allowing such atrocities to happen at all?! This should have never happened and yet, and yet... Dammit all, I can't accept this!"

"I know 'Kari, I know. Don't let it get to you. The more enraged and out of your mind you become, the more the vermin has control over you. You can't let that happen. Alright love?

"I... yeah. Sorry for getting wound up."

"It's ok, I understand how you feel."

"I know you do, no matter how much I wish you didn't. I just can't help but feel wrong, repulsed, guilty, so many other things. I pulled that trigger. I couldn't save that person, I couldn't do anything! I hate being so powerless..." Her voice became... empty, I think you could call it. "Maybe it would be better if I just... Did not come along."

A feeling of horror swelled up inside me. I know that tone. I know far too well what it carries along with it.

"Don't! Just don't! Don't ever say that again! Do you have any idea what would have happened if you hadn't come back with me?! I would probably end up killing Yanagisawa, yes, but with the amount of self-hatred I had, I doubt I would have come out alive from that! You're my rock. The anchor that has kept me sane and healed a lot of my wounds over these years. Please don't ever say that again. We both know what that kind of self-loathing leads to and I refuse to see you make the same mistake I did. I doubt I would survive it if you did..."

She looked surprised and maybe a bit touched. The worry for me was back too, but I need not dwell on that for now. Her eyes started wetting and she suddenly latched onto me and buried her head in my chest.

"Thank you. Thank you so much Nagisa. Gosh, what have I done to deserve you. I love you so much."

I couldn't help but smile.

"I could make a book about the things you've done for me, but the true question is what have **I** done to deserve you. Despite all I did you never gave up on me and supported me all the way. Even after I got us..." I left the rest unsaid. It was easy enough to understand. "I just... You're who I care for the most. I love you too 'Kari."

We stayed in each other's embrace for what felt like hours. Feeling her warmth reassured me that she was alright and that we would be fine. Yanagisawa will not break us. We had to get up eventually, even if very reluctantly.

"Let's go and speak to the grump over in the corner. I don't think he likes being ignored." I said, grinning at her.

Akari snorted. "Yeah, I guess we should stop neglecting the baby." Ignoring a background 'Hey!' she smiled and moved towards Karma as I did the same. Her smile was not as bright as it used to but it had something else. It was stronger? Firmer? More certain? Whatever it was, it reassured me that maybe we would come out of this not the same and yet not worse.

.

 _-(Unknown)-_

 _._

 _-(Unknown)-_

 _._

 **-Yanagisawa(P.O.V.)-**

A door knock distracted me from the data I was reviewing. Subject 09 really was perfect. Such a staggering amount of progress compared to the other failures. I think this might be it. The experiment I was waiting for. With the results from 09 I might finally obtain the power I desire. One day... One day it might be sunny again.

"Enter!" The supervisor of the Rocky Lab entered the room. He is nervous. More bad news I guess... How can things keep going wrong in the last phase of the plan?!

"Well? What is it? Don't dawdle and just tell me what has happened already!"

"Ye, Yes sir. Well, I got contacted at 2:00 AM, local time, by the security officers in the Rocky Mountains' Lab. There has been an... incident."

He was clearly delaying. I'll be pissed if he keeps beating around the bush.

"That much was obvious by your countenance. Stop prolonging this conversation as much as you can. What happened?"

"Well, at 1:30 AM, once again local time, an alarm was set off causing the staff to begin evacuation of the lab. When the ones on the bottom level tried to move to the stairwell they discovered that there was a fire blocking their passage, which was at the time assumed to be the cause of the alarm. In their panic they moved to use the cargo elevator to escape. The elevator went up a few meters before it stopped because of what we now believe to be foreign interference. We discovered signs of tampering with various pieces of equipment throughout the labs which leads us to believe that the complex was infiltrated. The so called Organization has been on the run for quite some time now so I doubt it was them. I can only conclude that this is the work of the same group that invaded the laboratory in Paris. We were unable to detect any of them though. The camera feed shows no one, though that might have been tampered with, and no guard or sensor detected anything. Though there was one guard whose security card was missing. He has been reprimanded already and put into the punitive program."

Interesting. My previous assessment that the group was composed of professionals appeared to be right. To be able to go inside such a remote lab and leave virtually undetected... I underestimated whoever these people are. I must make sure they cannot keep interfering. The failure of the plan would have consequences that I refuse to accept! I refuse to lose hope. This man appears to have something else to say though...

"Did something else happen that needs to be brought into my attention?"

He visibly cringed at that.

"Huh, you see... After the fire was extinguished and the staff returned to their positions... They found out that Subject 02 had been killed. Preliminary tests point towards poisoning."

That... Was far, far worse. How did they let that happen! All living subjects are necessary for any and all insight into their internal functions. This is a setback that I would have preferred not to have but it is manageable.

"Very well... Order the containment and continued study of Subject 02's remains. I doubt all potential has been extinguished. Also, pass on this message to all other chief supervisors: I will organize the reinforcement of the defensive measures of each lab, so be ready to receive your orders soon. You can leave now. Do not bother me again until I call you to discuss the new research arrangements in your lab."

"Yes, sir."

He left quite quickly. Probably relieved that no punishment was handed out. I have no time for that. There are more important things to do now, I can't let this collapse around me.


End file.
